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Environmental Concerns in General Aviation
Published in Elizabeth A. Hoppe, Ethical Issues in Aviation, 2018
Perhaps 80 percent of all general aviation accidents are attributable to pilot error. Maintained by third parties, the machine may have left the factory 40 years earlier. Having nothing to do with the accident, the manufacturer is nonetheless subjected to a lawsuit because of its deep pockets. Manufacturers frequently settled out of court to mitigate the risks of an unfavorable verdict. It reached the point that in 1986 Cessna completely shut down its piston production lines for a decade, until a new law limited the maximum period for which the manufacturer could be held accountable. Ironically, Cessna’s aircraft enjoy the best safety record in the industry.
Operations
Published in Suzanne K. Kearns, Fundamentals of International Aviation, 2018
General aviation refers to professional and private aviation activities that are not part of the airline or military sectors. This includes flight instruction, corporate flying, aerial work, small commuter operations, most helicopter operations, and pleasure flying. In total, approximately 350 000 aircraft and 700 000 pilots are involved in GA activities around the world (as compared to 60 000 aircraft and 400 000 pilots employed by airlines).7
The Air Traffic Control System
Published in V. David Hopkin, Human Factors in Air Traffic Control, 2017
Aircraft flights have many purposes. Supersonic aircraft fly long distances at high speed and great height, but have to be integrated with other traffic near airports. Originally, different kinds of military aircraft fulfilled different roles, but recently the trend has been towards aircraft with multi-role capabilities. Commercial airliners carry passengers and/or freight. General aviation is the broad concept applied to most powered flight that is not military or commercial: it encompasses business flying, flying for pleasure, training flights, air taxis, leisure and tourist flights, emergency flights, rescue flights, patrol or policing flights, agricultural flights (crop spraying), flights for sports such as parachuting, display or demonstration flights, research and development flights, and flights for a multiplicity of other purposes such as surveillance, photography, news coverage, television and advertising.
Cause analysis of unsafe acts of pilots in general aviation accidents in China with a focus on management and organizational factors
Published in International Journal of Occupational Safety and Ergonomics, 2023
Qian Ma, Guojun Wang, Sven Buyle, Xuan Jiang
General aviation (GA) is inclusive of all civil aviation operations, apart from scheduled air transport, including search and rescue flights, air medical flights, crop dusting flights, flight training and scientific experiment flights [1]. From 2011 to 2020, 94 GA accidents in China led to a death toll of 85 people. However, no accidents have been reported for scheduled air transport [2–7]. This outcome indicates that GA is a high-risk industry compared to scheduled air transport in China (see Figure 1). The development trend of GA accidents can also be observed in other countries. Given the fairly large number of fatalities and injuries caused by these accidents as well as loss of entrepreneurial production, GA accidents incur substantial costs to society. For example, Sobieralski [8] estimated the average annual GA accident cost in the USA to be between USD 1640 million and 4640 million. For Australia, the estimated total cost of GA accidents was USD 62.36 million in 2003, and New Zealand bore an annual accident cost attributed to GA between USD 9.74 million and 25.05 million [9,10]. The premiums earned by insurance companies always fail to cover the incurred losses related to GA accidents and incidents [11]. Therefore, reducing the number of GA accidents to ensure the sustainability of GA growth is an important safety challenge.