The US Federal Aviation Administration says it has missed its own accident fatality reduction target over the past three years.
Highlighted by FAA auditor KPMG as part of a wider procedural review, the aviation regulator says it failed to meet the key safety target largely because of the December 2005 crash of Southwest Airlines flight 1248 at Midway airport, Chicago and the August accident of Comair flight 5191 at Blue Grass airport in Lexington, Kentucky.
"We've known for a while we weren't going to make the target for reducing the fatal accident rate in commercial aviation," says FAA administrator Marion Blakey. "With the Midway and Lexington accidents factored in, the fatal accident rate per 100,000 departures over the last three years is 0.020. The goal was 0.018. That's one in every 5 million take-offs.
"The accident rate is so low, it's becoming more challenging to improve on it. So we have a new initiative in the flight plan to identify new ways to measure our progress in commercial aviation safety."
Failing to remedy all the KPMG's concerns is one of two milestones the FAA has missed in its "organisational excellence" goal under its Flight Plan roadmap for 2007-2010.
Source: Flight International
