Analysis of business jet safety incidents in UK airspace indicates that business aviation as a whole does not - as it might have been believed – have an underlying safety record to rival that of the airlines, even if the top corporate sector of business aviation does.

UK air navigation service provider NATS said 3.5% of the movements in the airspace it manages are business jets, but 16% were level bust incidents. 

NATS added that 33% were failures to follow standard instrument departures, 12% of altimeter setting errors and 10% of the dangerous error, where a pilot correctly acknowledges a level change instruction, but fails to carry it out, involve business jets.

Safety division chief at NATS, Richard Schofield, addressing a safety seminar at the European Business Aviation Conference and Exhibition (EBACE) in Geneva, also revealed that 10% of "gross navigational errors" in the Shanwick Atlantic oceanic area it manages are committed by business jet crews, and that although this represented a small number of incidents, it is disproportionate to the amount of business jet activity.

As for runway incursion incidents, Schofield reveals, the largest number of them in the UK occur at London Heathrow airport.

But he acknowledged it is a function of the airport's complexity and number of total movements, which includes a tiny proportion of business aircraft operations. But the highest runway incursion rate in the UK occurs at Farnborough which primarily handles business aircraft.

Schofield presented these statistics, he said, on the basis that incidents that are not heeded eventually become accidents. He pointed out that 25% of all business jet incidents in UK airspace are level busts, and that this rate is getting worse.

At the same seminar, but without having coordinated the content of his presentation with NATS, the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) head of flight operations, David Chapman, came to similar conclusions.

Taking fatal accidents in UK per million flying hours, the total business aviation rate is eight and a half times that for large public transport aircraft and in line with the rate for pure freight operations, which Chapman said is unacceptable.

He also presented evidence suggesting one reason behind this is that the airlines have bought-in fully to the well established mandatory occurrence reporting scheme, but reporting from the business aviation sector is proportionately much lower.

Chapman suggested this could be a culture problem that could be fixed to the benefit of all those involved.

International Business Aviation Council’s (IBAC) Don Spruston said worldwide findings bear out the UK experience, although data presented by business aviation safety analysts Robert Breiling and Stuart Matthews of the Flight Safety Foundation,  suggest that the best of two-pilot operated corporate jet aviation has safety standards as good as those of the airlines.

 

Source: FlightGlobal.com

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