Safety

[pax britanica]

with the usual down time between Christmas and reality setting in again I was reading a local history article about a post war accident near to where I live and I looked it up one the Aviation Safety Network database. While looking at that site it struck me that in the 50s-60s and even into the 70s barelya week went by without a significant air crash . Indeed in some cases large established airlines had several crashes in a year sometimes only weeks apart.

Happily today things are very different despite the occasional contention that some younger crew cannot actually fly the plane at all -Children of the Magenta Line etc., and I wondered what was the single most important invention, improvement, innovation that made air travel what it is today in terms of safety.

So leaving aside the self evident quantum leap to turbine power ridding the world of continual engine failures, substantial excess power and ability to fly over the worst of the weather what has contributed most to the reduction in accidents we happily see today compared with those of more than 40 years ago.
Any ideas from the informed?

PB

[Flap40]

In no particular order...

SOP's
CRM
FDM

[safetypee]

GPWS / EGPWS
measurable improvement in relation to number of CFIT accidents

F 40, #2, how would you identify or measure changes specifically associated with human performance - no change ?

[22/04]

Requirement by regulatory authorities that airlines should have appropriate cash liquidity.

[Pontius Navigator]

PB, you dismiss engine improvements. In the 70s MTBF would be nowhere near the times now. I remember a BEA Viscount credited with the highest annual utilisation of just over 3,600 hours. I don't know the figures but I think long haul jets comfortably exceed that.

Then flying above the weather reduces crew fatigue.

[DaveReidUK]

PB, you dismiss engine improvements.

No, not dismissed, just left aside.

Most would agree, I think, that the transition from reciprocating to turbine power is the biggest single factor in the improvement in aviation safety over the last 50 years.

In fact the OP specifically acknowledged that while asking what other factors also contributed.

[pax britanica]

Thank you Mr Reid and indeed Pontius I would not disagree with you that substantial improvements have been made since the days of Avons and Darts but i thought i ought to set a start point somehwere.

[TCU]

pax, agree its a superb data base and the statistics are sometimes chilling

Without tempting fate, mid-air collision is a rarety days (the 2006 GOL 737/Embraer accident being the most recent major event I can recall).

In the period you identify, mid-airs wrought havoc with regular collisions (NY City, Grand Canyon, All Nippon, PSA, Zagreb, Kurilovka, Aeromexico, Charki Dahdri. TCAS has undoubtedly made the skies safer

Having "controlled" (never eradicated) our metallurgy, engineering, flight control, CRM, mid-air collision and engine reliability issues, perhaps we are now at the cusp of a new set of threats like drones, complex electrical battery and system fires, extreme weather events, complex aircraft systems, that will need a new round of "accident learning"

Fate remains the Hunter

[Flap40]

To expand on my post above, those three were thought rather than assertions. We all know that in the old days FO's needed to know a different set of "SOP's" for every captain so greater standardisation has led us to a point where any two pilots from the same company/fleet should be able to fly together without surprises. Equally the introduction of FDM has meant that pilots are now less likely to search out the edges of the envelope although it is obvious that the stable approach message still needs more work.
CRM is probably more contentious. At my first CRM course I was told that CRM was invented by KLM after the collision at TFN. Whether that is true or not it remains the deadliest accident so CRM potentially marks a difference. If it didn't then i doubt that airlines would spend money training it. Having said that KLM did have ago at repeating TFN at Basel on 7th Mar 2016.

[Rosevidney1]

If only the synthetic horizon had been available in those days...………..

[BAengineer]

I know that most accidents end up being attributed to pilot error, but could I suggest that the main reason for the improvement in accident figures is technological - the aircraft simply dont go wrong as much. This then leads to less emergency situations which the crew are placed in and therefore less chance to get it wrong.