AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2021 - 24

SAFETY SPOTLIGHT
Art of the possible
Tracking the accident that didn't happen
BY RICHARD MCSPADDEN / Senior Vice President
AOPA Air Safety Institute
HAVE YOU EVER been part of a team that set a new national record?
Well, congratulations, now you have. If you operated in general aviation
in 2021, you were part of achieving the safest flying year ever.
If unofficial estimates hold, we blew by 2020's performance with
a 29-percent year-over-year improvement that set new thresholds
for the art of the possible in GA safety. Often, adversity is a stimulus
for record-setting performance, and it certainly was for all
of us who flew, controlled, and maintained GA airplanes in 2021.
The General Aviation Joint Steering Committee (GAJSC)
reviewed initial FAA data that estimated a fiscal year 2021 fatal
accident rate at 0.73 per 100,000 flight hours, down from 0.98 in
fiscal year 2020. Historically, these initial estimates are accurate to
within +/- 0.02 points when activity levels and raw accident numbers
are tuned to finalize the rate (see " State of Safety, " p. 104 " ).
Even at the most pessimistic end of any final adjustments, it was
a record-setting year by a substantial margin.
Turning in a 29-percent improvement in our safety performance
during a pandemic year is astonishing. Our flying
environment over the past two years involved many elements
known to increase flying risk: societal turmoil, social unrest,
shakeup in our work and home routines, and financial and job
stresses. Some of us lost colleagues or family members to a ubiquitous,
stealthy, and confusing disease. The effect on our mental
state can degrade our cockpit performance. Many of us in safety
also worried about the combined effects of dormant airplanes and
inactive pilots when activity levels dropped so precipitously during
the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through all of it,
from a flying perspective, we didn't just persevere-we thrived.
Our steady performance in FY 2020 and remarkable performance
in FY 2021 has many on the GAJSC wondering if we should
step back and re-evaluate our goal of reducing the fatal accident
rate by 10 percent over 10 years. Perhaps we should set even more
ambitious goals. Before we do that, we should work to try and
understand why we did so well in fiscal year 2021. The GAJSC
established a formal working group to try and answer that question.
It won't be easy. Tracking the accident that didn't happen has
always been an elusive effort.
Pilot behavior may provide a clue. AOPA Air Safety Institute
material was accessed a record 12 million times over the past
year, a 40 percent year-over-year increase. Subscriptions to our
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AOPA PILOT / December 2021
YouTube channel jumped by close to 50 percent. My safety colleagues
also saw more use of their content. I don't believe it's a
coincidence that in a record-setting flying safety year, we observed
record-setting consumption of safety and training material.
We also experienced a run on avionics upgrades. The Aircraft
Electronics Association reported substantial increases in sales and
installation of equipment in 2019 and early 2020, which meant
more airplanes flying with modern and more reliable instrumentation
in 2020 and 2021. Has anyone tried to find open time in an
avionics shop lately? Good luck. Any I've contacted are months
behind. Perhaps a contributing factor to our safer flying is more
modern and reliable equipment.
An important ingredient in safe flying is proficient pilots. And
during the pandemic, we flew! At the onset of the health crisis,
we paused to assess. Could we fly? Should we fly? Was it responsible?
After a brief period of inactivity, we responded swiftly and
aggressively. Activity at the top 77 GA airports around the nation
rebounded to levels higher than pre-pandemic activity. On many
days, more Cessna 172s were in the skies than Boeing 737s. Most
training schools we spoke with reported full schedules with business
exceeding pre-pandemic levels. In 2021, the AOPA You Can
Fly team saw an increase in the creation of flying clubs. It seems
pilots capitalized on the privacy, safety, and convenience of flying
GA during the uncertainty and chaos of a national crisis.
There's no single reason for the record safety performance we
all delivered in fiscal year 2021. Our behavior patterns indicate we
were addressing all five principles of ASI's safety model: knowledge,
training, proficiency, equipment, and culture. We'll keep making
progress by hammering away at all five points, at the micro level,
in how we fly and maintain our airplanes, and at the macro level, as
an industry, prioritizing important policies and system upgrades.
We should celebrate a fantastic year for safety under demanding
conditions. We should also take a sober view of the harsh reality
that we still experienced 192 fatal accidents in which more than
300 people lost their lives. More than 70 percent of these accidents
were caused by a pilot mistake
of some kind. As far as we've
come, we still have so much
more work to do. Go fly.
richard.mcspadden@aopa.org
RICHARD MCSPADDEN
has led the AOPA Air Safety
Institute since 2017.
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2021

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