Accident Rate Drops for 121 Operators

The state of civil aviation safety continued to improve in 2006, according to statistics released by the National Transportation Safety Board. The number of accidents in all segments of civil aviation in 2006 was less than in 2005, with general aviation recording the lowest number of accidents and fatal accidents in the 40years of NTSB record keeping.
Major cargo and passengers carriers who operate larger aircraft and carry passengers and cargo between major airports continued to have the lowest accident rates in civil aviation. These commercial carriers, who are officially classified by federal regulations as operating under 14 CFR Part 121, carried 750 million passengers more than 8 billion miles while logging more than 19 million flight hours in 2006. At the same time, these carriers had 31 accidents, down more than 20 percent from 2005. Only two of the 31 accidents were fatal, resulting in 50 fatalities, and include last summer's Comair CRJ accident in Lexington, Ky.
Making the statistics more impressive is the fact that this year reversed a trend in which major air carrier accidents had risen owing to a substantial increase in flight activity. The number of flight hours logged by air carriers has almost doubled since 1987 and the number of departures has increased by 50 percent. Major air carriers experienced in 2006, on average, only one accident every 266 million miles, 630,000 hours flown, or 368,000 departures. Fatal accidents are rare events, occurring only .01 accidents per 100,000 flight hours or .018 accidents per 100,000 departures.
Commuter operations (officially described as scheduled Part135 operators) show a similar pattern to on-demand Part 135 carriers, but account for a very small proportion of the accidents and flight activity. In 2006, commuter operators experienced only three accidents, one of them fatal, resulting in two fatalities. However, these operations account for only one percent of air carrier flight hours, resulting in 1.1accidents and .36 fatal accidents per 100,000 hours flown. These rates are comparable to on-demand Part 135 operations. For a complete report see the March 19 issue of Regional Aviation News.