GA Crash Stats Rise Significantly For 2005

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AOPA’s Air Safety Foundation (ASF) does an exhaustive assessment of aircraft accidents each year called the Nall Report but it’s a year behind. That’s because it tries to include as many NTSB final reports as possible and it usually takes the NTSB six months to a year to complete a file. For 2004, 82 percent of the reports used in the Nall stats were from final reports and the ASF says that’s enough to give an accurate picture of what it was like in 2004. It’s difficult to compare the two sources, however, because the ASF apparently has different criteria for what constitutes a GA accident. It gave the total number of GA accidents in 2004 as 1413 with 290 of them fatal. “Maneuvering” continues to be the phase of flight responsible for the most fatal accidents, while landing resulted in the most non-fatal accidents. There were a total of 45 weather-related fatal accidents in 2004, 10 of them involving thunderstorms. Most weather-related accidents involving fixed-gear piston singles and were the result of VFR flights ending up in IMC.

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