And Now for the Good News

The NTSB issued a press release today that epitomizes what is at stake.

"Washington, DC --The state of civil aviation safety
continued to improve in 2006, according to statistics
released today by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The number of accidents in all segments of civil aviation in
2006 were less than in 2005, with general aviation recording
the lowest number of accidents and fatal accidents in the 40
years of NTSB record keeping."

"Major air carriers who operate larger aircraft and carry
passengers and cargo between major airports continued to
have the lowest accident rates in civil aviation."

If you’ll read the release, you’ll see those number aren’t quite as encouraging as we might like but they are an improvement. When you really understand just how safe aviation is, you begin to understand how hard it is to improve that record. In other words, the majority of effort is spent just trying to maintain that level of safety. In case I’m not explaining that well, perhaps this will help.

"Over the years, the number of major air carrier accidents
has increased, primarily due to a substantial increase in
flight activity. The number of flight hours logged by air
carriers has almost doubled since 1987 and the number of departures has increased by 50 percent." (Emphasis added)

The number of flight hours for air carriers has doubled, the number of departures has increased by 50 percent and the number of controllers has ___what ???

Don Brown
March 13, 2007