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."

2007/2008 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 and 2008. 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.

 

2007/2008 US General Aviation Mishaps (NTSB)    (2007)


  US Registered Aircraft
(approx.)		 Mishaps/yr. (Fatal)
(per 1,000 ac)		 Mishaps/yr.
(per 1,000 ac)
Mooney M20 7,800 0.9 3.7
Cessna 182* 16,100 0.7 4.1
Cirrus SR20/SR22 3,700 1.4 4.3
Cessna 350/400 660 2.3 5.3
Cessna 172* 26,700 0.5 5.5
Beech 36 2,850 2.3 6.4

All US-registered SE Aircraft

146,000 1.3 7.5
Piper PA-46 Malibu/Matrix 850 1.8 7.6
Diamond (Single Engine) 1,080 0.9 7.9

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