10 dead in 42 days
There seems to have been a high incidence of general aviationtragedies in Australia over the past few weeks and I for one am wonderingwhy. Is it a seasonal trend, whether thatbe occupational such as fire-bombing or perhaps climatic the pleasant weatherconditions seeing more private aircraft take to the skies or was there someother explanation. A search of accidentinvestigation reports on the ATSB website provided the following informationbut no obvious explanation. However Inoted a higher accident occurrence rate within the private sector.
Should we be concerned that in the past 42 days, inAustralia, there have been 10 lives lost in a total of 8 separate aviationaccidents involving VH registered aircraft? Or that in the period 18/10/13 25/10/13 (8 days) there were fiveaviation tragedies resulting in six lives lost.
Should we be further concerned that of those lives lost,only two were lost through direct involvement in dangerous occupations, i.e. cropdusting (WA VH-JAY Ayres Corp S2R Thrush) and firebombing (NSW VH-TZJ - PZLWARSZAWA-OKECIE M-18A Dromader).
A further three of the accidents involved amateur builtaircraft (WA VH-ALP Lancair Legacy, NSW VH-CTE Rand Robinson KR-2, VIC VH-ICZ Lancair Legacy), with a total of four lives lost.
Another of the accidents involved flight training operationswith one life lost (VIC- VH-AUT Cessna 182R).
While the remaining two accidents and three lives lost wereprivate operations (VIC VH-KKM Cessna 182, QLD VH-WAV Cessna 206G).
To give some comparison, in the same period in the previousyear (15/09/12 25/10/12) there were only two fatal accidents (VH-UXG andVH-LLF), considerably less than this year. Sadly however, the loss of life was high; VH-UXG claimed 6 lives, whilstVH-LLF was a single fatality.
State by State sees Victoria having the highest accidentrate for the period, with a total of three separate accidents and a loss offour lives. NSW and WA have both had two single fatal accidents each, acombined total of four lives lost. WhilstQld has only had a single accident, it resulted in a double fatality. South Australia, NT, Tasmania and the ACT didnot record any fatalities in that period.
The year-to-date sees a National total of 15 separate fatal aviationaccidents with 21 lives lost. Thatequates to a life lost every 14 days. Togive some perspective, if each of the victims of these accidents had twochildren, potentially, this year, 42 children of aviation families would havelost a parent, a staggering prospect.
I believe we should be concerned... very concerned. What do you believe?