The prevention of weather-related general aviation accidents will be the top priority for the US Federal Aviation Administration in its ongoing campaign to improve GA safety, according to administrator Michael Huerta.
The FAA observes that the GA fatal accident rate stopped improving six years ago, and last year there were 259 fatal accidents at a cost of 449 lives, continuing a more-or-less flat trend.
Over the past decade, according to FAA figures, loss of control in flight remains the top cause of GA fatal accidents, with 40% of those cases involving stalling. This has motivated the FAA to work with manufacturers to develop low-cost angle of attack indicators to keep pilots informed of how much of a performance margin they have from stalling. The other major potential fatality-reducer would be inflatable restraints – air bags – which could be retrofitted to existing types. The agency wants to achieve these advances without additional regulation by improving awareness and driving down the cost of improvements.
FAA plans include working with the industry on a prototype programme to use de-identified GA operations data in the Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing (ASIAS) programme to provide data that would enable the sector to become more pro-active about determining safety priorities.
Meanwhile Huerta announced that the agency is issuing a policy that streamlines the process for granting approval for high-performance GA aircraft to use reduced vertical separation minima (RVSM). The new policy is intended to establish a more flexible and efficient process that will allow the FAA to customise its RVSM evaluation based on the circumstances of the applicant. The FAA will consider previous operator and aircraft experience in determining the extent of the evaluation, and this will reduce the amount of time required for operators to receive an authorisation.
Source: FlightGlobal.com
