IS FLIGHT TRAINING BECOMING SAFER?

One of the first questions people ask before they begin flight training is 'how safe is this career?" If a study recently compiled by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association Air Safety Institute and Liberty University School of Aeronautics is any indication, flight training is becoming safer.

- Athol Franz

The study looked at flight training risks and innovations from 2000 to 2019 and took note of the number of accidents and their causes. According to the report, loss of aircraft control comprises 54 percent of the fatal accidents that occur during instructional flight. Most of those are attributed to stall / spin events and they mostly happen in the airport circuit, often during a go-around, when the aircraft is at low altitude, high power and a high angle of attack. Overshooting the base-to-final turn has also been identified as a situation that places a pilot at risk.

In both instances, a stall / spin event is not recoverable due to the low altitude.

"The aviation industry has done an excellent job of stall / spin awareness when overshooting base to final," said Robert Geske, AOPA Air Safety Institute manager of aviation safety analysis. "Similarly, we should stress stall / spin risk during take-off, climb out and go-around as well as emphasise energy awareness and management during those flight phases."

According to Andrew Walton, Liberty University School of Aerospace director of safety, in the past few years there has been an increased awareness of risk factors in aviation and flight training is getting safer.

"Sustained efforts by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), manufacturers and the flight training community have resulted in a fatal accident rate that is now roughly half of what it was at the start of the century," said Walton, "From 2000 to 2004, the fatal accident rate averaged 0.49 per hundred thousand hours and decreased to 0.26 in the last five years of the study. However, there remains plenty of work to do, particularly in mitigating the risk of loss of control in flight."

Other factors that cause accidents