"Incident" or "Accident"?
I just received an NTSB e-mail, titled:
"NTSB TO RELEASE FACTUAL REPORTS ON TWO AVIATION ACCIDENTS"
The first one concerns a runway overrun of an RJ CL600.
"There were no injuries among the three crewmembers and 49 passengers (including 3 lap-held children). The airplane was substantially damaged."
The second one is about a Beechcraft 400A which lost power on both engines.
"After landing, the aircraft rolled off of the runway onto a taxiway, and the right landing gear tire deflated. [...] The two pilots on board were not injured."
Now, I have always been under the impression that in aviation an "accident" implied at least one fatality, and that everything else was formally an "incident".
While I'm ready to admit that this is probably too restrictive a definition, I would still have called the first event an "incident", in view of the fact that there were no injuries.
As to calling the second event an "accident", that seems faintly ludicrous.
Any comments?
The question is not just a matter of language use: statistics tend to distinguish between "accidents" and "incidents".