U.S. Airlines Have 34 Deaths In 3 Years

Marion Blakey says.... and Ellen Engleman Conners, noted......

Makes you feel like announcing a tsunami warning. It's tempting fate to tout safety statistics unless you know it's safe. It always reminds me of the big scene in that movie  Marathon Man

Laurence Olivier (the Nazi Szell) to Dustin Hoffman, earnestly: "Is it safe?" "But is it safe?"

As the ERAU chap says at the bottom here, "safer, not safe". He's implying that people get complacent when the record improves. So Is it Safe? Is it even any safer?
January 4, 2005 - U.S. Airlines Have 34 Deaths In 3 Years

WASHINGTON (USA) - Only 34 people have died in U.S. commercial airline crashes in the past three years, making it one of the safest periods in aviation

Chairman Conners, NTSB

Marion Blakey, FAA

 history even as more Americans than ever travel by air.

On Oct. 20, a Corporate Airlines twin-engine turboprop crashed into the woods on approach to the Kirksville Regional Airport in Missouri, killing 13 people. Those were the only fatalities aboard U.S. scheduled airlines for the year.

National Transportation Safety Board chairman Ellen Engleman Conners, noting that some 42,000 people die every year on the roads, said, ``I hope all modes of transportation could replicate aviation's safety record.''

The last U.S. crash of a jumbo jet was Nov. 12, 2001, when American Airlines Flight 587 lost part of its tail and plummeted into a New York City neighborhood, killing 265 people. Safety investigators concluded that the crash was caused by the pilot moving the rudder back and forth too aggressively, which put more pressure on the tail than it could bear.

Last year, the number of fatal accidents per 100,000 departures was .015. Air travelers are estimated to have boarded planes 685 million times in 2004, a 3 percent increase over 2000, the previous busiest year, according to the Air Transport Association.

Marion Blakey, who heads the Federal Aviation Administration, said new technology has improved safety. For example, many planes now have systems that warn pilots if they're about to fly too close to the ground.

Jets and turboprops manufactured after March 29, 2003, are required by federal regulations to have a so-called Terrain Awareness and Warning System. All other planes with more than six seats must be retrofitted with the devices by March 29, 2005.

The plane that crashed in Missouri in October was months away from being outfitted with a terrain-warning system that might have prevented the accident.

On the ground, 34 major airports have been equipped with systems that warn air traffic controllers of a potential collision on runways. One of the worst aviation disasters in history involved two jumbo jets that ran into each other on a runway in Tenerife in the Canary Islands in 1977, killing 582 people.

Weather radar and wind shear alert systems also have helped eliminate accidents caused when planes encounter concentrated downward bursts of wind on approach to the airport.

Safety experts agree that better training and awareness of safety issues have played a big part in making U.S. skies safer.

A key effort has been the FAA's formation in 1997 of the Commercial Aviation Safety Team, which set the goal of reducing fatal aviation accident rates by 80 percent by 2007. The accident rate has fallen 50 percent since then, and is on track to meet the goal, said FAA spokeswoman Alison Duquette.

As part of the CAST project, airline unions and management, along with federal agencies and manufacturers, are collaborating on identifying safety problems and solving them. Among the 85 safety improvements CAST is working on include:

Teaching pilots how to recover from unusual flight conditions that could be dangerous.

Developing tougher standards for icing-prevention technology on new planes.

Establishing new procedures for air traffic controllers to prevent collisions on runways.

Blakey said such cooperation hasn't always been the norm.

``At an earlier point in aviation's development, there was less incentive, less willingness to be candid about problems,'' Blakey said.

Though pilots often are at odds with their employers, they do agree that airline management shares their commitment to safety.

Paul Rice, vice president of the Air Line Pilots Association, said airline executives realize that safety enhances the bottom line.

``If there's a big plane crash, people stop flying,'' Rice said.

Rice points to a change in federal regulations, which took effect Dec. 14, 1995, as a key development for aviation safety.

On that day, all commercial air carriers - from commuter planes with 10 or more passenger seats to jumbo jets - were required to follow the same safety rules for operating. Before then planes with 30 or fewer seats fell under less stringent regulations than bigger aircraft.

Echoing the caution of many safety experts, Bill Waldock, aviation safety professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona, characterized the past few years as ``safer, not safe.''

Waldock noted much was made of the fact 2002 ended without a single person dying in a commercial airline accident. Eight days into 2003, 21 people were killed in a plane crash in Charlotte, N.C.

``When we have a real safe period, people get complacent,'' Waldock said.
Damned Lies and Statistics

"Just looking at statistics will show that as a PAX one is at most risk flying on a third world carrier. This is a statistical fact. Not to say that first world carriers or ATC do not have accidents or incidents."
And as a little proof of my theory, here's the hull losses of some third world carriers:

PIA since 1956, 30 hull losses
Air India since 1947, 18 losses
Indian Airlines since 1953, 57 losses
Philippine Airlines, Since 1946, 51 losses
Nigerian Airways had 12 losses between 1969 to 1995


Better 1st world carriers such as:

 Lufthansa have had 9 hull losses since 1959,

Air New Zealand 3 since 1966,

Austrian Airlines 4 since 1960 and

Cathay Pacific 6 since 1948.

Finnair for example had 3 hull losses since 1945 with last loss in 1963.

British Airways has had 3 losses between 1975 and 1976 all Tridents.

On another note, Air France had 89 hull losses since 1945 (Makes you wonder)



A statistic about the accidents around the world.

Based on ICAO scheduled airline departures and reported fatal accidents.

First number being the percentage of all departures and second percentage of the Globe's fatal accidents.



North America: 42% / 20.5%

Europe: 29% / 21.4%

Asia-Australia 17% / 26.8%

South & Central America 9% / 16.8%

Africa 3% / 14.5%

But caution with such statistics; the interesting number is the hull losses versus total number of flown revenue hours divided by the number of aircraft the company has.

Going back as far as 1945 is also totally misleading, as in the years 1945-1955 various odd ex military machines in large numbers were used on routes that were not suited, and airlines such as AF ( as you mention it ) operated in very drastic conditions in Asia and Africa ( already !).
Airlines such as Finnair never had such aircraft numbers and such routes...

If you apply the formula above , and restrict your survey to the last 25 years ( so after 1980 ) you will find that most large airlines in the world have now very similar results with some notable exceptions , ( e.g, Africa , Korea ) and if one takes out hull losses due to terrorist actions, one will find that some of the poorest countries can have very safe airlines operations ( e. Bangladesh's Biman, Sri Lanka, Ethiopian, etc..) So third world = auto unsafe is a totally wrong concept.
Time frame for accidents and operations was based on info from 1992 to 2002.

So here are hull loss figures for the same airlines after 1980 for comparison.

3rd world

PIA, 11
Air India, 3
Indian Airlines, 12
Philippine Airlines,7

European

Air France, 8
Lufthansa, 2
Air New Zealand, none
Austrian Airlines, 1
Cathay Pacific, none
Finnair, none
British Airways, none
SAS, 4
Alitalia, 4
Iberia, 3
KLM, 1

Just to give a glimpse to the performance of the better third world carriers since 1980.

Ethiopian, 13
Kenya Airways, 3
Biman, 4
Cameroon Airlines, 5
Sri Lankan, 5 all terrorist/war related losses

If one compares hull losses/ fleet size/ hours flown/ cycles it is clear that there are safer and less safe airlines.
Are those hull loss figures down to crashes in the unintended landing sense, or just general hull losses?

Hull loses can occur in a number of ways and perhaps the age of the "3rd world" fleets might account for a hull loss whereas a newer a/c from a "first world" carrier suffering the same incident may have been repaired rather than scrapped due to the financial aspect?

Also, figures for % flights / % accidents by region... takes no account in size of a/c - heavily mountainous regions and nasty weather with small aircraft crashing would worry me less than a different region having fewer accidents but with bigger planes and therefore more dead...perhaps here ASK vs fatalities could be a useful measure.

Figures can be bent to say what you want. As other people have said, RSK/ASK flown vs (or per) fatalities might be a more useful measure to your argument - would be interested if you can dig these up.
 

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