The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association Air Safety Institute (ASI) has released its 34th edition of the AOPA Air Safety Institute Richard G. McSpadden Report, which covers calendar year 2022.
The report’s accident data are updated on a rolling 30-day cycle allowing for the most current snapshot of general aviation safety performance.
Changes to the 34th report that align it with industry standards largely affect non-commercial fixed-wing accidents. While accident counts remain, the classification system used to denote phase and accident cause has changed. This effort standardizes data with current NTSB reporting and creates future opportunity for wider applications within the AOPA Air Safety Institute.
The report notes an increase in total accidents from 1,120 in 2021 to 1,152 in 2022. However, a large increase in flight activity by more than 500,000 hours helped mitigate the increase in total accidents. While overall accident rates rose slightly from 4.26 per 100,000 flight hours to 4.30, the fatal accident rate continued trending downward from 0.76 to 0.68 per 100,000 hours.
“Non-commercial fixed-wing accidents trended slightly upward. However, following a large increase in flight activity for this category, the accident rate trended downward to 4.84 with the fatal accident rate also trending downward to 0.79,” said Robert Geske, AOPA Air Safety Institute manager of aviation safety analysis. Geske continued, “Non-commercial helicopter accident rates decreased, while commercial fixed-wing and commercial helicopter rates increased.”
“Pilot-related accidents remain around 70 percent, with loss of control events continuing to be the leading causal factor, and weather-related accidents remaining highly lethal,” Geske concluded.
ASI’s summaries for a given period provide insight and comparisons of selected dates versus previous years. Please review the summaries for a detailed analysis of trends and rates for non-commercial and commercial fixed-wing operations, non-commercial and commercial helicopter operations, and sport/experimental operations.
View the 34th Richard McSpadden Report
