19 Fatalities in less than 3 months
 

In the latest issue of Flight Safety Australia magazine, on page 52 under “Selected Australian accidents/incidents 1 October – 19 December 2023”, it shows 19 fatalities in that time.

This seems an extraordinary number. What do others think?

I think the GA fleet is getting old and tired and maintenance is perhaps now being skimped because of high parts and labour costs.
Also, the approach to training needs to get back to ‘old school’ whereby stick and rudder skills take precedence over some of today’s more touchy feely emphasis, the so called ‘non technical skills’ . This is not saying NTS isn’t good, just that it seems an inordinate time spent on that in the early stages of training and testing would be better spent on basics…the “pull back and the cows get smaller - keep pulling and they get too big too soon” stuff.

Maybe a 3 month window distorts the statistics? Year on year may be better and flight hours per fatality number may also be relevant. Mark Twain had it right on statistics.

In the USA we had 37 fatal accidents in the same time frame.
Statistics and statistics and damn lies and fabrications.
Unless we know what the total number of aircraft and flights were over the period.
Then compare those numbers with same timeframe previously.
19 could be high, could be low.

Ageing aircraft?
 

As others have said “ …and damned lies.”Unless there’s more facts and a much longer timeline we are only guessing. As regards that old saw about ageing aircraft, beloved by the CASASTROPHE, we know that some accidents have been RAAUS registered aircraft and I think latterly one each a Cirrus and a helicopter.
Personally I wouldn’t swap my two pre 1970 aircraft to feel better about safety, more likely the reverse in reality.
My question would be just what does age matter? Arguably overhauled engines are more reliable than in the past and there’s lots of young airframes in terms of hours in service, including mine.
Besides I’d be thinking most fatalities occur due to the pilot, not the aircraft.

In my crusty old opinion, students are spending more time 'heads in' looking at colourful displays, ADSB outputs, moving maps etc, programming autopilots and GPS's.
Sure, I'm jealous of the newer technology, but their lookout and Situational Awareness suffers. The 'avoid the stall' theory also works on paper, but the instant they pull too hard or skid around the corner, they are entering unchartered territory. Full opposite aileron or a swift application of hard back elevator is a natural reaction, and they rarely get a second chance to learn why its the wrong thing to do.

It's a bit like the ridiculous road death toll stats the media and police churn out every holiday period, where they expect a reduction in the overall number of deaths every year, and yet completely fail to take into account the half million or so people that get added to our population every year (and proportionate increase in number of cars on the road). I guess reporting per capita just wouldn't look as damning, would it? Likewise with aviation, without at least knowing the number of flights from one period to another, the information is meaningless.

I don't know. I reckon most students still get their start on a 152 or PA-28 or similar, where the equipment hasn't much changed since the 70's.

37 fatal accidents or 37 fatalities?

Before the finger gets pointed at "kids nowadays" and the age of the equipment it would be interesting to know the age of the pilots.

That's true to some extent, I guess particularly in the club environment, although a lot of the bigger schools these days are using Diamonds and G1000 equipped 172s and so on. But even in the oldest 152 you've got iPads and smart phones and all that sort of stuff.

So, from an article in The Australian by Robyn Ironside dated January 25, 2024.

the first paragraph copy and pasted,

…..” Aviation accidents in Australia fell to their lowest level in 17-years in 2023, despite a number of shocking crashes, including three mid-air collisions.

Data provided by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau showed there were 139 accidents reported last year, the lowest since 2006, and well down on the 10-year average of 209 a year.

They included 19 fatal accidents, compared to an average of 21 a year, resulting in 33 deaths – slightly above the ten-year average of 30.5 a year.

ATSB chief commissioner Angus Mitchell said tragically several crashes involved multiple fatalities, but the increase in lives lost was “statistically irrelevant”.……..”


The last sentence answers Mr. Smiths question…

The fleet is getting old however looking at many of the investigations underway, many still seem related to crew. Is numerous investigations in progress, many on here sided more with engineering issues across most of these, however I have my doubts, which leads to your second point. We will await the final report.

I think you are correct, the large chunk of new ticket holders have learnt from advanced technology in front of them, they then head up north, in which it is steam gauges only. That is a frustration a charter owner raised with me not that long ago, it’s all fancy screen stuff, his fleet has none of that, and he said is stands out on a check flight. The ‘old school’ training program is near impossible to get these days. I could probably name you less than half a dozen outfits, across the whole country, that would offer such an experience. The future is sausages, fancy screens, and non existent stick skills.

Be interesting to know the class of aircraft involved. I haven't looked at the accident statistics but I think many were ultralight or home built rather than VH registered? I also suspect the number of GA and private hours flown by VH registered aircraft has been in serious decline in recent years?

The increase in lives lost in 'community service flights' was statistically irrelevant, until it was politically expedient to pretend it wasn't by inventing a subset of private passenger operations.

The numbers can be and are manipulated to mean whatever anyone wants them to mean.

I suppose if you squint really hard you could find an aging aircraft issue in the numbers, but I'll be jiggered if I can.

Lives lost may be “statistically irrelevant “ in that most light aircraft crashes only kill one or two occupants. Compared with the road toll, a few bugsmasher prangs are hardly newsworthy, though the media love beating up such events. More people get killed by lightning strikes and bee stings.
What WILL cause a stir will be the loss of a large transport aircraft. That’s not a case of ‘if’ but ‘when’. “Statistically ”, the longer we go without a major crash, the closer we get to having one.
The resulting statistics will make it into the wider world of international safety analysis and show that we aren’t the best in the world like some of us think we are.
lies, and damned statistics…

Where do e.g. the Sea World helicopter tragedy fatalities show up in that? It's probably my fat thumbs, but I can't seem to click on the correct buttons to see where and how those fatalities are categorised.

You need to clear a bit of the clutter.

Under Occurrence Class, select Accident. Under Injury Level, select Fatal. Down on the timeline, select 2023. The result should be 19 occurrences in total, and you'll then be able to see an occurrence marked on the map near Southport.

If you then clean up the filters and select Activity > Aircraft Type > Destination Airport, you can see the Sea World crash has been categorised under Commercial Air Transport.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....569a329ef2.jpg

An often commonly held view but definitely not supported "statistically".