Originally Posted by
duncan_bayne
I've been trying - & failing - to find some solid safety data on RA vs. GA flying in Australia. I've spoken to many people who claim that RA has an equivalent safety record to GA.
See the most recent ATSB publication at
https://www.atsb.gov.au/newsroom/new...ear-snap-shot/
The short answer is that it's not true. RA aircraft have a higher fatality rate than GA aircraft in PVT ops, and a much higher fatality rate than GA aircraft while training.
Also, the ATSB seems to have done some miscategorising - the 5 dead in the Caboolture skydiving crash should not be in the PVT ops section.
RV6s seem to be excessively represented in 2014, with _3_ fatal accidents (including one which was untrained low level aeros.)
to quote the ATSB:
Figure 22 shows the rate of accidents and fatal accidents involving recreational aeroplanes over
the 2005 to 2013 period. Despite the increase in flying activity, the accident rate has increased for
several consecutive years. In 2013, the recreational aeroplane accident rate in Australia (about
350 per million hours flown) was significantly higher than for any other type of flying, including
higher risk GA operations such as aerial agriculture (100 accidents per million hours flown) and
(VH-registered) private/business/sport (including gliding) (95 accidents per million hours flown).
The fatal accident rate involving recreational aeroplanes in 2013 (53 fatal accidents per million
hours flown) was significantly higher than for comparable private/business/sport (including gliding)
operations (20 fatal accidents per million hours flown).
If you compare equivalent ops mix (training + private), by averaging the GA numbers across training + private (weighted by hours flown), the numbers look even worse (53 to about 13).
There's no good way of comparing the VH- experimental fleet to the 19- experimental fleet, unfortunately, or compensating the other numbers to compare only factory-built aeroplanes.