Effectiveness of Automatic Safety Systems in Reducing General Aviation Fatalities

Abstract

General aviation accounts for 95% of fatal aviation accidents in the United States. Many of these fatalities may be preventable with the inclusion of advanced advisory or automatic aircraft safety systems; however, past research has rarely focused on the effect such systems could have if applied to general aviation. This paper addresses this gap by starting with proposed safety systems and scoring their effectiveness using detailed accident data rather than the more common approaches of analyzing accident categories or polling subject matter experts. Using a data-driven logical model, this paper evaluates four systems (terrain impact prevention, upset prevention, turbulence avoidance, and emergency landing) for potential to reduce fatalities. The scoring process appears in some detail, which starts with system requirements and National Transportation Safety Board data as inputs and results in expected fatal accident reductions. The analysis estimates that implementing all four systems may result in a 66.5% reduction in general aviation fatalities, with terrain impact prevention alone resulting in a possible 30.7% reduction. These results motivate immediate effort toward implementation and certification of aircraft safety systems into general aviation, not only to save the lives of hundreds of pilots and passengers a year, but also to prime small aircraft transportation for future developments.