Accident Rate Highest In Years

Air Safety Week,  March 29, 2004  

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The accident rate for scheduled air carriers increased in 2003, according to statistics released last week by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

The preliminary NTSB analysis shows 52 accidents. The next highest number is 50 accidents in 2000. When measured by the amount of flying recorded, the accident rate for 2003 is the highest since the NTSB began keeping score in 1984. Part of the reason for the unprecedented rate is that the volume of flying has not yet returned to pre-9/11 levels. With a diminished denominator and accidents occurring at an average frequency of one per week, the resulting rates are the highest ever, as measured by accidents per 100,000 flight hours, per 100,000 departures, and per 1 million miles flown.

The rate per departure is perhaps most commonly used. As such, the NTSB data shows one accident for every 188,000 departures.

Accidents are cases involving hospitalization or death to persons and/or substantial or complete damage to aircraft and equipment.

To be sure, the number of deaths - 22 in 2003 - was a fraction of that in years past, such as 531 killed in 2001 (a toll that includes passengers and crew on the four airplanes hijacked by the 9/11 terrorists), and in 1996, when more than 340 were killed in the TWA Flight 800 and ValuJet Flight 592 crashes. Of the 22 killed in 2003, 21 were aboard the Air Midwest turboprop that crashed Jan. 8, 2003. The other fatality involved a Northwest Airlines [NWAC] tug operator, killed Sept. 12, 2003, at Norfolk, Va.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) tracks fatal accidents as its primary measure. By the FAA's bookkeeping, 2003 was the safest in many years, with more than 400,000 departures per fatal accident. "The fatal accident rate is the lowest it's ever been," proclaimed Nick Sabatini, associate FAA administrator for regulation and certification. Sabatini was speaking at last week's FAA Forecast Conference in Washington, D.C.

With two airplanes destroyed in 2003, the hull loss rate per million hours flown of 0.117 is not nearly as high as for 1985, when eight hull losses pushed the hull loss rate to 0.918, or nearly one hull loss per million hours flown.

Nonetheless, even though the overall 2003 accident rate was discouraging, the presence of only two fatal accidents suggests that the goal of reducing the fatal accident rate 80 percent by 2007, a major FAA objective, may still be achievable. Previous to 2003, the declining accident rate per annum showed the industry was likely to achieve the 2007 goal (see ASW, April 29, 2002).

The record posted for 2003, although high as a rate, will have a positive impact on the FAA's "safety index." The "safety index" computation also takes into account air taxi and general aviation categories (see ASW, Sept. 15, 2003). In these two categories, accidents increased in 2003.

However, the "safety index" is calculated as a three-year rolling average, so the year 2000 will drop off the next iteration of this system-wide score, and 2003 will be included. What drops off is the fatal January 2000 crash of Alaska Airlines [ALK] Flight 261, an MD-83, in which 86 passengers and crew were killed. Also dropped will be the February 2000 crash of an Emery Worldwide Airlines DC-8 freighter, in which three were killed. As an FAA official explained, "With the continued fallout from 9/11, the exposure throughout the system remains below the 2000 level, so the improvement as reflected in the index will be somewhat muted. In the end, the line should show a very modest improvement."

Moreover, the poor record for one year does not necessarily mark the beginning of a trend. The overall picture from 1997 to the present, in terms of three-year rolling average of departures per accident for scheduled air carriers, shows a general improvement in safety. >> For scheduled air carrier accident data, see www.ntsb.gov/aviation/Table6.htm <<

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