More categories needed for GA safety
October 6, 2011, 08:55 pm
Recent airplane accidents across the country have brought sudden attention to aircraft and pilot safety. While major airliner accidents that affect airplane passengers and the public at large are obvious calls to action for the Federal Aviation Administration, some General Aviation pilots feel that many high-profile recent accidents have cast a pall on safety in GA, and should be categorized differently when under investigation, according to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.
Bruce Landsberg, president of the AOPA, says that while recent accidents, like a Reno, Nevada, air race crash that killed a pilot and 10 spectators, have justifiably received a significant amount of attention from federal agencies like the National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA, test and experimental flight is inherently more dangerous than most forms of GA, and certain aircraft accidents should be categorized differently to produce statistics more indicative of real-world aviation safety practices.
Landsberg cites two specific accidents - one that involved a self-built experimental airplane, the other a prototype - that resulted in fatalities. The field of GA, he notes, is extremely diverse, and these accidents skew the fatality statistics for GA pilots.
In the case of the Reno crash, the World War II era P-51 Mustang flown by Jimmy Leeward had been highly modified for speed, and while aircraft experimentation often leads to technological breakthroughs in the field, it's performed with a certain level of assumed risk. As a point of comparison, the FAA is looking at a piece of the empennage that may have become dislodged just before the crash in Reno, causing the pilot to lose control of the plane. Video evidence also does not show the pilot visible in the cockpit as it 's crashing, an indication that he may have lost consciousness as a result of the forces exerted by the jet-speed crash. These are both risks one assumes when flying, but with more rigorously tested mainstream aircraft, safety is more of a concern.
Recently, the FAA issued a fine to airplane manufacturer Cessna because of a fuselage issue during a test flight. Planes manufactured by major producers go through a comprehensive series of stress tests, and everything about the aircraft is analyzed virtually, through computer aided design software, before a prototype is even produced. Leeward, by comparison, had severely shortened the wingspan of his plan in an effort to fly faster. The accidents, some contend, should not be similarly categorized.
The nature of aviation, no matter what the branch of GA a pilot may be a part of, often necessitates specific forms of pilot insurance. Life insurance for pilots, for instance, covers a variety of risk factors that a normal life insurance policy designed for average civilians may not cover.
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