Measuring Safety:

When we try to apply numbers to safety we inevitably look at accidents and accident rates. Simply looking at how many airplanes of a type that are involved in mishaps isn't useful: some airplanes are more popular.

One way to measure is to ask how many airplanes are involved in mishaps and compare that to the number of airplanes of that type flying.

To do this we use "number of mishaps per 1,000 airplanes."

2007 Accident Statistics

The following table shows information collected from government (NTSB and FAA) sources about accidents involving US-registered airplanes in the US during 2007. The analysis is intended to be very simple (mishaps per 1,000 airplanes).

A caution is given elsewhere that care should be used when using this information: aviation accidents are few in number; accidents involving fatalities are rare events indeed. Small numbers of mishaps or the time period reviewed can dramatically affect these kinds of numbers.

 

2007 US General Aviation Mishaps (NTSB)
  US Registered Aircraft Mishaps
Total(Fatal)		 Mishaps(Fatal)
(per 1,000 ac)		 Mishaps
(per 1,000 ac)
Cirrus SR20/SR22 3,335 14 (3) 0.9 4.2
Cessna 182* 16,068 70 (15) 0.9 4.4
Mooney M20 7,736 34 (8) 1.0 4.4
Cessna 350/400 581 3 (2) 3.4 5.2
Cessna 172* 26,591 147 (12) 0.5 5.5
Beech 36 2,831 20 (8) 3.0 7.1
Diamond (Single Engine) 899 7 (1) 1.1 7.8

All US-registered SE Aircraft

145,036 1,188 (225) 1.5 8.2
Piper PA-46 Malibu/Matrix 772 9 (1) 1.3 11.7
Piper Aerostar 601 177 3 (1) 5.6 16.9

* Recent model C-172 have a somewhat worse record; C-182 a slightly better record