Shortly after the infamous JFK Jr. accident, I came across a headline in a prominent East coast newspaper, entitled something like "Just How Safe are Those Small Planes, Anyway?". In an all too predictable manner, the author of that article proceeded to condemn general aviation and insisted that we ought to pass new federal legislation to prevent more "innocent" people from dying in similar accidents.

As we all know, humans are innately afraid of dying by falling out of the sky. Add to this the emotional loss of a beloved American celebrity, throw in a handful of one-sided statistics, and it's easy to see how a news reporter can convince the average Joe (and perhaps his congressman) that the world could do with a few less private pilots. If we harbor any hopes of preserving general aviation in this country for future generations of pilots, it is imperative that we speak out and defend ourselves from this type of irresponsible journalism.

I decided to head for the modern-day library (internet) and dig up some facts of my own. Detailed aviation accident statistics are published online by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) at www.ntsb.gov/aviation/Stats.htm. This website contains accident reports from the period 1982-1999 for flight rule categories CFR 121 (airlines), CFR 135 (air carriers and air taxis) and CFR 91 (general aviation). Some of the interesting statistics that can be derived from the NTSB data set are summarized below in Table 1.

Now, we can debate whether it's fair to assess the merits of general aviation by comparing the safety records of small aircraft against those from commercial airliners. It's well documented that airline travel is by far the safest form of mass transportation in this country. In fact, time spent riding on an airliner is frequently safer than time spent on a whole host of other non-travel related activities. However, fair or not, the media will judge us by comparisons to the airlines, so I'll begin the discussion here.

The typical journalist will immediately point out that 78.3% of aircraft fatalities are caused by general aviation aircraft. However, what they will intentionally fail to include in their discussion is that the lion's share of flight hours, 62.3%, are logged by these same aircraft. This is an important detail, since the average citizen incorrectly believes that airlines account for the vast majority of flying hours in the United States. While airlines don't crash all that often (0.34 fatal accidents per million flight hours), when they do crash they tend to kill a lot of people at once (34.6 fatalities per fatal accident). On the other hand, small aircraft crash more frequently (16.57 fatal accidents per million flight hours), but kill far less people at a time (1.85 fatalities per fatal accident). The net result is that general aviation aircraft, on an hourly basis, are only about 2.6 times more deadly than the airlines (30.73 vs. 11.82 fatalities per million flight hours).  

Table 1. Summary of NTSB aviation accident statistics.

	airlines	air carriers	air taxis	general aviation
% of total flight hours	27.7	4.4	5.6	62.3
% of total fatalities	13.4	2.6	5.7	78.3
fatalities per year	140.3	26.8	59.8	820.0
fatalities per fatal accident	34.60	6.10	2.37	1.85
accidents per million flight hours	2.49	9.29	42.41	87.22
fatal accidents per million flight hours	0.34	2.35	10.53	16.57
fatalities per million flight hours	11.82	14.31	24.96	30.73
collateral fatalities per year	6.4	1.8	1.8	13.6
collateral fatalities per million flight hours	0.54	0.98	0.74	0.51

The media normally does not report the statistics in this manner, but instead chooses to express the accident rates on a per passenger-mile basis. While the NTSB data doesn't give these figures, we can estimate them as follows. Roughly speaking, a general aviation aircraft will carry 2 passengers 150 miles in an hour (300 passenger-miles per hour), while an airline will carry 150 passengers 400 miles in an hour (60,000 passenger-miles per hour). On this basis, we calculate that the airlines are now about 500 times safer than general aviation aircraft (0.2 vs. 100 fatalities per billion passenger-miles).

This begs the question of which makes more sense - statistics based upon an hourly or a passenger-mile basis? It all depends. If you just want to travel from point A to point B, we should use the passenger-mile units. However, if we want to compare flying with other non-transportation activities, then the hourly units are more appropriate. The NTSB data provides a good example of this. Some of the aviation fatalities reported in their data were deaths of people not aboard the aircraft. These "collateral" fatalities are also summarized in Table 1. In a typical year, we find that about 10 people on the ground are killed by commercial aviation and another 14 killed by general aviation.

I would argue that these people are the only truly "innocent" victims of aviation accidents. When the country debates possible restrictions on general aviation, these are the statistics they should look at. The public should not be overly alarmed with pilots who accidentally kill themselves, but rather concerned about aircraft that fall from the sky and kill innocent bystanders. In this regard, the data shows that general aviation aircraft are actually the safest, killing fewer people per flying hour than any of the commercial carriers (0.51 vs. 0.54, 0.98, or 0.74 fatalities per million flight hours)!

Even though I've made a case that general aviation doesn't adversely impact public safety, there are still plenty of critics who feel that flying should be outlawed, simply for our own good. If we follow this mentality of passing laws to save people from themselves, where else should we look? In Table 2 below, I list several other means by which one might die, arbitrarily chosen to provoke a discussion on this topic. Many of the statistics listed in the table can be found at the Center for Disease Control website, www.cdc.gov/ncipc/osp/usmort.htm.

Table 2. Various ways to die.

means of death	approximate deaths per year
general aviation - collateral deaths	14
playground accidents	15
dog bites	20
mountaineering	30
skydiving	35
skiing	35
lightning strikes	85
insect stings	100
food allergies	125
SCUBA	140
falling in bathtub	300
bicycling	750
recreational boating	800
general aviation	820
weather hazards	1600
fires	4000
drowning	4800
pedestrian-traffic accidents	5500
food poisoning	6500
suffocation	10000
accidental falls	12000
AIDS	16000
drunk drivers	17000
homicide	22000
suicide	31000
firearms	35000
automobile accidents	43000
heart disease	750000

Note that dog bites account for roughly the same number of annual deaths as airplanes falling from the sky atop of people do. Nearly ten times as many individuals as this die from food allergies, unsuspectingly eating nuts or shellfish in meals cooked at restaurants. Can you imagine banning peanut butter, or requiring dogs to be muzzled at all times? The total deaths from general aviation are nearly identical to those from bicycling or recreational boating, but no one seems to label these as risk sports. Speaking of risk, what about sex with a stranger or drinking and driving? AIDS and alcohol related traffic accidents each account for 20 times as many deaths as aviation. Then there are firearms - 40 times as deadly as flying, but sacred cows when it comes to government legislation. Near the top of the list is perhaps the most common convenience in our lives, the ordinary automobile. These machines cause more than 50 times the number of deaths as airplanes, yet how often do you see car crashes making the front page news? Lastly, I've included heart disease on my list, registering in at nearly a thousand times more deaths per year than flying. I realize that this isn't a fair comparison, but if we could save just 0.1% of those lives by outlawing jelly donuts, then we could make up for all the annual fatalities caused by us private pilots!

[J.R. McBride is a 600 hour private pilot and has been a member of AAF since 1986]

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