Sources of aviation safety stats?

JDK · **Posted:** Sun Sep 07, 2008 10:03 am

Hi folks,
Does anyone know where you can get reliable online aviation safety statistics; ideally for different forms of aviation (GA, experimental, airline etc.) and ideally NOT just US data?
Cheers

Bill Greenwood · **Posted:** Sun Sep 07, 2008 4:55 pm

AOPA publishes a summary each year, The Nall Report, which is good. But is only U S figures and not warbirds, just gen av.It would be interesting to see reports from UK or down under, etc.

JDK · **Posted:** Mon Sep 08, 2008 12:01 am

Hi Bill,
It would be good to see a greater variety of stats. I'm mainly just curious as to general aviation safety, so I have some facts an my fingertips when trying to counter the 'oo scary' approach most people have because of the media 'aircraft-all-crash' view.
Anyone?

Bill Greenwood · **Posted:** Mon Sep 08, 2008 9:47 am

As for facts, unfortunately gen aviation is dangerous. It is more dangerous than driving. You can improve the odds by not flying IFR at night, racing at Reno, flying acro or warbirds, (the boring stuff is safer) , and of course flying in good weather, as well as avoiding some models with bad records like Aerostar, Mu2 etc.. Then it is likely as safe as average driving. The airlines have a safety record about 5 times better than driving.
Some of the addiitonal analysis comes from Aviation Consumer who has taken a cold look at the statistics, especially in regard each model. Some is open to interpretation. For instance Cirrus has a bad fatality record, is it because it attracts low time overconfident pilots or an inherent flaw? It is not even certified for spins, is part of the problem it's difficency at or near minimum flying speed, stall/spin or is it that it is marketed as sort of an airborne car so most anyone can go anywhere anytime?

mustanglover · **Posted:** Mon Sep 08, 2008 4:36 pm

JDK wrote:

Hi folks,
Does anyone know where you can get reliable online aviation safety statistics; ideally for different forms of aviation (GA, experimental, airline etc.) and ideally NOT just US data?
Cheers

Try this. He seems to put alot of work into his research and website.

http://www.planecrashinfo.com/

Chris Brame · **Posted:** Mon Sep 08, 2008 8:27 pm

Ok, that brings up a question: I've always heard the Ercoupe was a very simple and safe bird to fly - do the statistics bear that out?

Bill Greenwood · **Posted:** Mon Sep 08, 2008 8:59 pm

I am pretty sure Av Consumer did a study on the eurcoupe, aircoupe within the last year.

Moonlight · **Posted:** Mon Sep 08, 2008 10:14 pm

Chris Brame wrote:

Ok, that brings up a question: I've always heard the Ercoupe was a very simple and safe bird to fly - do the statistics bear that out?

I actually read in a recent "Flying" magazine that the Ercoupe has a pretty lousy record. Ironically, the fact that it was touted as such a safe and "unstallable" aircraft was attributed as a partial reason. Pilots were pretty lax in their flying technique. The example from the article referred to what must have been an all-too-common situation where the pilots let their airspeed decay on final, the nose would drop, and there wasn't enough elevator to recover the airplane before it hit the ground in a nose-down attitude. No stall, but a bent bird none-the-less.

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Sources of aviation safety stats?

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