Analyzing and Comparing Commercial Aviation Accident Statistics

Analyzing and Comparing Commercial Aviation Accident Statistics

SCOTT GREENWOOD

ERAU

Aviation Safety/SFTY-409

M3.2_GreenwoodScott

Gloria A. Wilson

September 01, 2014

Analyzing and Comparing Commercial Aviation Accident Statistics

Every time an aircraft takes off and lands, a statistic is updated somewhere such as--this aircraft has had 1,259 successful launches and landings with only five minor mishaps. The problem comes in with the truth data. For example, as newer models of aircraft are brought into production and ultimately put on the line, there would be a need for new statistical data for the newer model. The problem becomes the fact that the new model is a 737-800 and the old data may have come from an older 737-500 model. If investigators and loggers of the data aren’t careful, the data could get misplaced or mixed in with the wrong model statistics.

Another problem that investigators run across during accidents is that someone could try and cover up some of the data to prevent them from being found at fault. When something like this happens, the investigators could still find the data, but it may take them a lot longer to finish their investigation which can be very costly and time consuming.

In an effort to create an agency that could operate independent of federal oversight and provide accident data free of bias, “Congress reestablished the NTSB as a completely separate entity, outside the Department of Transportation to conduct investigations and make recommendations from an objective viewpoint” (NTSB, 2014). As the NTSB investigates all civil aircraft accidents, their reporting on statistical data is very reliable, however the following list represents data that is not included in the NTSB investigations and are therefore filtered out since they don’t help the investigation to identify operational factors:

* “passenger and cabin-crew related problems, such as passengers being

* injured due to hot coffee spilling on them...