While your chances of dying in a horrible airline accident are somewhat lesscertain than winning the lottery, researchers say the little runway mishaps that can ruin your day have more to do with the number of planes in the air than bad decisions made by pilots.
The number of airline mishaps attributed to pilot error significantly declined between 1983 and 2002, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
While the overall rate of mishaps remained stable during that time, the proportion of mishaps involving pilot error decreased 40 percent, due to better training and improvements in technology that aid pilot decision-making, according to the study. The findings are published in the January 2007 edition of Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine.
“A 40 percent decline in pilot error-related mishaps is very impressive. Pilot error has long been considered the most prominent contributor to aviation crashes,” said the study?s lead author, Susan P. Baker, with the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy. “Mishaps up in the air ? what most people are concerned about ? are less common than people though, and less likely to be due to pilot error.”
Instead, more mishaps involve ground crews and increasing congestion on the taxi ways and at the terminals, she said.
Their findings validate the Federal Aviation Administration?s focus on improving safety over the last decade, said FAA spokesman Les Dorr. “This is in fact the safest period in aviation history. Our target was to reduce incidents by 80 percent. What we achieved was a 65 percent reduction.”
Since 1998, the Commercial Aviation Safety Team has analyzed every accident to determine what went wrong and improve pilot training, Dorr said. Today, your chances of dying in an airline accident are about 1 in 13 million.
While individual airlines at Baltimore Washington International/Thurgood Marshall Airport maintain their own ground crews, once the plane leaves the gate, those crews are under the authority of FAA controllers. Dorr was unable to provide immediate statistics for incidents at BWI this year.
Baker?s study found that mishaps more than doubled when the aircraft is motionless or being pushed back from the gate: from a rate of 2.5 to 6 mishaps per 10 million flights.
“The increase in mishaps while aircraft are not moving may require special attention,” Baker said.
Research report
Other key findings of the study included:
» Mishaps related to bad weather ? the most common decision-making error ? dropped 76 percent.
» Mishaps caused by mishandling wind or runway conditions declined 78 percent.
» Mishaps caused by poor crew interaction declined 68 percent.
» Pilot error was most common during taxiing, takeoff, final approach and landing of the aircraft.
» The mishaps rate increased the most when aircraft were being pushed back from the gate or standing still, but pilot error was least common in such mishaps.
» Mishaps during takeoff declined 70 percent.
Source: Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
