David Learmount/AMSTERDAM
A dramatic difference in safety levels between European states which are members of the Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA) group and those which are not has been revealed in a new Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) report. Studying approach and landing accidents, the most common of all accident categories during flight, the Foundation's Approach and Landing Accident Reduction (ALAR) task force also reveals that the number of such fatal accidents worldwide will increase from 15 to 23 a year by 2010 if the trend continues.
The report, released by the FSF at its 17-18 March European Aviation Safety Seminar in Amsterdam, covers 287 fatal accidents which killed 7,185 people between 1980 and 1996. All the accidents studied involved Western-built jet or turboprop airliners above 5,700kg in weight.
One of the report's findings is that airlines from the 27-nation strong JAA are 10 times less likely to have approach and landing accidents than those from non-JAA European states. The fatal rate for JAA airlines using Western-built large commercial jets is 0.16 per million flights against a world average of 0.43 per million flights, with Africa the worst region at 2.43/million, and Latin America next at 1.65, says the ALAR task force. The 17 non-JAA states in Europe include Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Poland, Romania and Turkey
The most common primary cause is identified as "omission of an action-[or] inappropriate action by a flightcrew member", says the report, explaining that the most frequent mistake in that category was continuing descent below decision height or minimum descent altitude without visual reference, or when visual cues were lost. Go-arounds at the right time could have prevented 77% of accidents, the study says.
The second most common cause is "lack of positional awareness", a category usually associated with controlled flight into terrain accidents. Loss of control and runway overrun accidents come next in the frequency scale. "Evidence that most approach and landing accidents occur within a radius of about 15nm [28km] of the runway threshold suggests that lateral position awareness is less of a problem than vertical position awareness," says the report.
Cargo, ferry and positioning flights are eight times as likely as passenger flights to be involved in fatal approach and landing accidents, the task force reveals.
Source: Flight International
