Private aviation is, understandably, regarded as just that: private. Pilots often consider it their right to disregard established practices, especially outside controlled or busy airspace.
As private pilots cannot be denied privacy and freedom, the only effective method of softening their resistance to regulation and safe practices is persuasion and education, often through industry involvement. This has long been acknowledged in theory. In practice, methods used for circulating information and for involving industry need constant revision, according to the US Federal Aviation Administration.
The USA, which has the world's largest general-aviation (GA) community, had a safe GA year in simple accident-numbers, but the rates look marginally less good. The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) believes that the USA sets the global GA benchmarks because 60-70% of all GA activity takes place within its boundaries.
Europe, which has a large and varied general-aviation community - although its performance is less well-catalogued in most European nations than GA is in the USA - is about to face a major challenge. When the European Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA) finishes drawing up the continent-wide operations regulations for commercial airline fixed-wing operations - Joint Aviation Regulations (JAR) Ops 1 - it will try to reach a pan-European consensus on the regulations for fixed-wing GA operations, JAR Ops 2.
There is one increasingly used European technique intended to control user charges and increase the involvement of the GA community in its own regulation. This concerns devolving the standards-surveillance task to officially recognised representative organisations for various parts of the GA community. The British Gliding Association, for example, has always tested pilots and issued gliding licences on behalf of the UK Civil Aviation Authority.
In future, predicts the CAA's head of general aviation, Alan Daley, the devolvement of GA standards-monitoring tasks in Europe will probably occur in civil air-displays, remotely piloted vehicles, parachuting, micro-light flying, and the issuing of permits-to-fly for kitplanes.
MONITORING TASK
The aviation authorities will continue to certificate types, set standards and take ultimate responsibility for them, but the monitoring task will be shared with the GA community. For example, the JAA would certificate a new kitplane type, but the Popular Flying Association may take on the task of testing and granting permits-to-fly to each airframe when its assembly is complete.
The aviation authorities' motivation for devolvement is definitely cost-based, Daley says. He explains that, under European regulations as they are expected to develop, the newly deregulated airlines will not accept that the user charges, which they are required to pay, should subsidise the GA sector. Devolvement of surveillance tasks to the recognised associations has desirable spin-offs he adds, appearing, in practice, to benefit safety awareness while extending effective resources for standards monitoring.
Daley sees JAR Ops 2 as being a good opportunity for the cross-fertilisation of safety ideas, and regards the European Union, with its new common regulations, fertile ground for generating new life in the European GA community. The UK, for example, was the originator of CAA-approved air-display codes-of-practice, which have now been adopted across the continent. In these pre-JAR-Ops-2 days, that is the only example of a national GA "regulation", which has been adopted throughout Europe. Already, Daley says, co-operation on common regulations for aerial work is being discussed. Daley has no worries about European co-operation over JAR Ops 2 because common sense usually prevails, he says.
CORPORATE EXCELLENCE
In US corporate aviation, the problem of private flyers cutting corners seems to have been overcome. FAA chief David Hinson says: "I wish to commend the general-aviation community, particularly corporate business aviation, for its superb record in 1994. Corporate business aviation is one of the most vibrant - and vital - parts of the industry."
The FAA's GA forecast conference in February 1995 "...re-affirmed the aviation industry's commitment to zero accidents", Hinson continues. "The corporate arena has established a high standard of safety for the rest of the aviation community to follow," he notes.
Hinson was commenting on the fact that, the US corporate/executive sector had equaled its lowest ever fatal accident rate (0.07 per 100,000 flying hours), which improves on the US commuter airline industry's best ever (0.129 in 1994) and is in the same league as the US major airlines' figure for 1994 (0.03 per 100,000 flying hours).
Hinson congratulates the US aviation community because, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), preliminary figures for 1994 showed that accidents had been reduced to 1,989, the lowest annual total of GA accidents in the USA since detailed records began - or since the Second World War, as the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) puts it. The hours flown, however, were shown as being reduced too, partly because of "a statistical adjustment in government estimates". Compared with 1993, there was an apparent increase in total and fatal accident rates (see diagrams).
The only US GA safety rate, which has improved, according to the FAA figures, was the total incident rate, the best since 1988. Taken at face value, the overall accident rate was the worst since 1988 [before 1988 the FAA criteria for calculating accident data were different].
The FAA notes that, during 1994, air-taxi accident numbers increased to their highest level since 1991. Rates for that category were the highest since 1990 (total rate, 4.2 per 100,000 flying hours, fatal rate 1.35). For helicopters, an 11% decline in their accident rate in 1993 was followed by a climb of 16% in 1994, records the FAA.
Bruce Landsberg, AOPA's executive director, says of the overall statistics: "The Government has cut its estimate of flight hours by 23% since 1991, which we find questionable. This makes it difficult to compare safety to previous years. But regardless of rates being affected by flight-hour assumptions, the reality is that accidents and fatal accidents are down. This is good news for all who fly in general aviation today."
Australia sees it as a failure not to achieve further reductions to an almost flat GA accident statistics trend (Flight International, 14 December, 1994), and the industry attributes this at least partly to a major re-organisation of the whole regulatory standards, surveillance, and licensing system. As a result, the whole Australian GA industry and its regulators are indulging in some deep soul-searching as inquiries examine the wisdom of some of the new measures.
The Government has proposed implementation of a full direct-cost recovery for air-safety rule making, audit and enforcement. The GA industry in particular opposes a paid-for policing function. It sees inconsistencies in a situation where a body, as a "government business enterprise", also makes the rules, charges for their enforcement and has the task of paid service-provider in other civil-aviation infrastructure areas.
"DEVOLVEMENT"
As part of its cost-pruning programme, the Australian Civil Aviation Authority (ACAA), like Europe, has promoted the increased devolvement of tasks such as pilot-licence and rating tests, flight crew-examination administration, operational flight-following and some aspects of GA safety reviewing.
New Zealand, following a Swedavia review, which criticised the practice of funding of regulatory activity by direct hourly user-charges, is now limited to safety audits and start-ups, while other safety regulation and standards (SR&S) and safety promotion functions are funded by industry levies. The funding arrangement, however, is, by agreement between the parties, strictly temporary and a permanent funding structure is yet to be agreed by consultation.
The ACAA has already been battered by sweeping non-selective staff cuts in a review of resources coinciding with its severance from public funding. It has since had to accommodate a series of policy shifts and restructures as the Government first pressed the "user-pays" proposal for regulatory activity, then backed away as several inquiries, spurred by the third-level-airline accidents, revealed that the regulatory system's effectiveness was questionable. A major parliamentary inquiry this year is intended to define the new shape of safety regulation. It has already heard about conflicts of interest because regulators have to strive to maintain a balance between "customer" welfare and sound regulation; and about an alleged breakdown of the regulatory function as operations and airworthiness staff, under political pressure to collect scalps, have alienated the GA industry.
Among GA safety problems identified by submissions to the inquiry are weaknesses in pilot-training syllabi and flying-school oversight; a loss of training expertise; deficiencies in the examination system; a lack of managerial experience within the CAA; a legislative base which is difficult to enforce and which is backed up by inconsistent administrative sanctions because there is no code of practice; and operator financial problems leading to maintenance and operational shortcomings which were not picked up by the CAA.
THE WEATHER FACTOR
AOPA's 1995 Joseph T Nall General Aviation Safety report will this month reveal that 19% of all US GA fatal accidents in 1994 were weather-related, with one-third of fatal accidents to multi-engine types and more than half of those to single-engine retractables happening "in weather". The draft Nall report states that 62.6% of all accidents and 64% of the fatal crashes were "...attributed to pilot-related causes".
Phase of flight, as usual, is significant. The AOPA report states that 49% of all 1994 GA accidents occurred at take-off or landing, although "...few of these accidents were fatal". Manoeuvring accidents again were high on the list. Here, 43% of the fatal accidents, says the draft Nall report, involved "buzzing or unauthorised low-level flight".
This tallies with UK experience. The CAA reports that one-third of the 1994 fatal GA accidents happened because pilots "...continued into adverse weather" and that, during the 15 years from 1980 to 1994, the same factor was responsible for 24% of all fatal accidents to single-engine aircraft (see diagram). In the case of twin-engine aircraft, the CAA reports that continued flight into adverse weather and "loss of control, including asymmetric flight following an engine failure" together caused 69% of all fatal accidents during the same 15-year period.
The CAA, motivated by a fatal bad-weather controlled-flight-into-terrain accident to a Titan Airways Embraer Bandeirante in January 1993, started to review the regulatory requirements for the most basic UK instrument rating (IR), known as the instrument-meteorological-conditions (IMC) rating. The Titan accident report describes the flight as "an unexplained period of flight into deteriorating weather". Following this, the IMC rating, which requires simple skills compared with those demanded for a full IR, will almost certainly be replaced by an instrument weather rating (IWR).
Winning an IWR, according to the CAA's flight crew-licensing (FCL) department, will entail more thorough training and testing than for the IMC rating. Also, the requirements for the IWR revalidation will be more demanding and more frequent than that for the IMC rating, but will not be a full IR.
The CAA's FCL department expects that the IWR will replace the UK IMC rating "within about 18 months", and says that it looks highly probable that a rating such as the IWR will be demanded by the European JAR FCL by January 1998.
Equaling the USA's flight-safety levels is usually seen as a difficult or unattainable goal for most nations. This year, however, the UK CAA has proudly announced that it has bettered the US GA fatal-accident rate by a fair margin (see diagram). Despite having started 1994 badly with three fatal crashes in January, the CAA's estimate of the 1994 fatal-accident rate was 1.07 per 100,000 flying hours.
The size of the UK GA community is minute compared with that of the USA, making it easier to monitor for safety-education and surveillance purposes. It does, however, face longer winters, more fickle weather and a higher proportion of controlled airspace.
Methods, which the CAA uses to promote safety, include distribution of several periodicals and information sheets. More actively, twice a year, it has "CAA safety days", where pilots may fly or drive to a chosen venue. The location varies to ensure that all GA people have a chance, from time to time, of taking part in a full-day update on safety concerns, with an opportunity to consult the experts. Also, for more than a decade now, the CAA's GA safety unit has held frequent safety evenings at individual clubs. If the safety figures remain good, it may be an indicator that these tactics for maintaining a safety culture have a measurable effect.
BETTER INSTRUCTION NEEDED
In its last complete annual analysis (for 1992), the NTSB says that the majority of accidents in flying-club aircraft reflected the pilots' need for a better basic knowledge of the club aircraft. The Board recommended the AOPA guide as the only current source of information on "...clubs which need tighter management", as AOPA politely puts it.
Many of these accidents, says the NTSB, could be avoided with "tighter flying-club operating policies, procedures and standards" and it calls for stricter attention to pilot qualifications and maintenance practices. The NTSB says that most non-fatal accidents are associated with engine failure, or some kind of mechanical failure. Most fatal accidents involve pilot error.
Europe is soon to implement policies, which at least pay lip service to the need for better supervision of the instruction process. At present, in most European countries, a pilot may learn flying to private-pilots-licence (PPL) level by receiving instruction from any pilot, provided that the final tests are conducted by approved examiners. Also, there are no specified minimum standards for clubs, which offer instruction to PPL level, (Flight International, Licence to change, 22-28 February, P25).
Under the new European JAR Ops 1, which will be adopted late this year, clubs which offer instruction will have to be registered and will be required to undertake to meet stated criteria. Whether this makes a difference will depend upon the effectiveness of regulatory surveillance ensuring that standards are upheld.
In the UK since 1990, only pilots with at least a commercial pilot's licence (CPL) have been allowed to earn money from instructing. Pilots with an instructor's rating and a PPL only may not instruct for reward. Previously, the minimum requirement was 150h flying and passing the tests. The upgrade was intended to raise the average standard of professional instruction for PPL and more advanced students and, according to Colin Beckwith of the UK CAA's FCL division, it has provided recognisable improvements in the quality of student flying at the test stage.
Beckwith warns that, under the proposed new JAR for flight crew licensing (JAR FCL), if it is adopted in its current draft form, PPL-level pilots who have gained an instructor's rating will be able to teach for money. The hours and rating required, Beckwith points out, could be achieved in one summer of hard work, so an instructor with no winter experience could be teaching pilots for their PPL.
Another worry, says Beckwith, is the proposed JAR FCL "revalidation" (renewal) requirement for the instructor rating. The pilot must have conducted 100h instructional flying within the three-year period, and must either have attended a day's flying-instructor "refresher seminar" or passed the revalidation tests. Beckwith asks: "Which would you choose?"
SIGHTSEEING RISKS
In the USA, the NTSB says that it has been concerned for a long time that "sightseeing flights" in both fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, are insufficiently regulated. It points out that this sector of the US market serves some 2.5 million passengers a year, about half of them in Hawaii. Former senior NTSB investigator Dr John Lauber says: "There are currently no clear, standardised, definitions of air-tour/sightseeing operations and no specific operating rules for the majority of such operations."
Lauber describes the problem as being lack of instructions about pilot experience, routes and altitudes, contact with air-traffic control and the need for specified emergency-landing areas for helicopters. In 1994, there were two serious sightseeing-helicopter accidents in Hawaii, one involving three fatalities.
As a result, the NTSB held two public hearings about the "flight seeing" issue during late 1994. The FAA is now considering regulatory upgrades.
The definition of GA varies so greatly from nation to nation that, even where statistics are available, useful comparisons are difficult to make. In the Russian Federation, GA means sport flying only. Most of the sport flying is associated with clubs, and most of the clubs, are associated with the military.
In Russia, all commercial flying, whether it is air work, air taxi, corporate, or commuter, is considered to be in the same arena as commercial-airline work. Statistics are few, and period comparisons are so far not available, but in the first nine months of 1994, according to the Department of Air Transport (DAT), there were 14 sport-flying accidents, half of them fatal. Fatalities numbered nine crew and seven passengers, and ten aircraft were written off. The DAT provides records of other accidents which might, outside Russia, be classified as GA. In the first ten months of 1994, there were seven accidents to medium and heavy helicopters, two of them fatal. Eleven accidents involved light helicopters, four of them fatal; and one fatal accident involved a light fixed-wing aircraft being operated commercially.
Germany does not try to estimate rates for GA safety, but gives detailed numbers of accidents for nine categories, including balloons, para-gliders and parachutes.
If all the sport categories are disregarded, Germany's GA accident numbers seem to have been on a slightly downward trend during the past 20 years, but the rapidly increasing activity in ballooning and various lightweight categories means that the GA accident totals show a gently rising trend over that period. Taking the last decade, however, excluding balloons and the lightweight categories, safety totals for both fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters seem to have more or less stagnated.
There were three accidents involving aircraft over 5.7t, but two involved, only hardware damage while taxiing. The pilot of a Lear Jet 35A lost his life on take-off from Moscow.
According to the German aviation authorities, among aircraft between 5.7t and 2t, the accident figures have reduced significantly for the first time since 1990. In 18 accidents in this class, eight people died. No significant points are recognisable in the conditions of the accidents.
In Germany during 1994, among fixed-wing types in the 2-5.7t category there were three fatal accidents and 17 non-fatal; in fixed-wing aircraft of less than 2t there were 17 fatal accidents and 180 non-fatal; helicopter operations saw five fatal accidents and 18 non-fatal; and motor-gliders respectively three and 62. Adding the lightweight operations and ballooning brings the 1994 German GA accident totals to 64 fatal accidents in which 109 people died, and 627 non-fatal.
The Luftfarhrt Bundesamt (LBA) says that, following the interruption in 1993 of a long-increasing trend in accidents involving aircraft under 2t, the 1994 accident figures in this class have once more increased clearly, reaching the highest number since 1983. The number of fatalities also reached a ten-year high of 44. An initial analysis of these accidents reveals three main points: accidents after engine failure through lack of fuel, which resulted in unsuccessful emergency landings, collisions between aircraft of this class in the circuit or close to airfields and accidents in bad weather.
TECHNICAL TEMPTATION
Nine accidents occurred as a result of bad weather, with the loss of 21 lives. Here, says the LBA, the use of autopilots and modern navigation aids obviously played an increasing role, when insufficiently trained VFR pilots flew into IMC with the support of these devices.
The 18 helicopter accidents maintain a long-running average. With five fatal accidents resulting in eight deaths, the number of serious accidents is higher than in previous years. This is connected with several instances of helicopters breaking up in flight. Considering the overall picture the LBA places particular stress on accidents during rescue operations - seven of this type - which, apart from one fatal crash, mostly ended with damage to hardware.
The common aspect of GA flight safety in all areas of the world seems to be the sector's vulnerability to lack of pilot experience and weather. When the two are brought together, accidents often happen. The authorities' intent - since experience, by definition, will always be relatively low in large parts of the GA sector - is to educate pilots to be more aware of their vulnerability. Involvement of the sector and its voluntary associations in standards of surveillance is clearly going to be one way of doing this.
Source: Flight International
