MAC = midair collision
Quote from the safety review
The total GA fleet hours flown in the period 2003-2023 is estimated to be 22,882,078 hours, during which 39 collisions involving 78 aircraft occurred. This equates to a collision General Aviation and Mid-Air Collision Accident Statistics 2003-2023 rate of 0.341 per 100,000 hours flown, which is equivalent to a collision occurring every 293,360 hours.
MAC event statistics were obtained from NTSB annual safety statistics reports, which also include FAA estimates of the annual hours flown by the US GA fleet. Figures for the period 2010-2018 (excluding 2011) were available. In this period 77 MAC events occurred, involving 154 aircraft. The estimated annual GA fleet hours flown in the period averaged 20,896,382 (ie approximately 20 times the annual fleet average hours flown in the UK). The resulting collision rate was 0.092 per 100,000 hours flown, which is equivalent to a collision occurring every 1,084,124 hours.
My speculation on factors that could be influencing this difference:
1. Lots of places with class A at a low altitude (2500 ft being common around London)
2. Lots of narrow spaces for VFR aircraft such as the area between LCY and Southend with a class A base at 2500 ft.
3. Huge focus on strict infringement enforcement with little to no leeway meaning some pilots suddenly find themselves with a “broken” transponder and not talking on the radio
I will repeat myself – why not do some analysis based on the actual reports instead of speculating?
I volunteer if someone manages to find me the 77 faa and 39 uk reports.
There’s another thread about this very subject and the same bogus report.
Cobalt wrote:
I volunteer if someone manages to find me the 77 faa and 39 uk reports.
Here’s a start: https://www.ntsb.gov/Pages/AviationQueryv2.aspx, that’s the NTSB database
Most of the UK collissions were between gliders. I wonder how thee UK stats per flying hour would workout if gliders and powered were seperated. Is the UK 4 times higher than the USA due to the glider collission numbers?
172driver wrote:
Here’s a start: https://www.ntsb.gov/Pages/AviationQueryv2.aspx, that’s the NTSB database
Unfortunately there is no way to filter for mid-airs…
The UK list is contained in the quoted UK report, but unfortunately the report does not contain a clear source for the US statistics (unless I missed it). This would also help to understand whether the US stats contain gliders and powered-unmanned collisions; if you exclude these the UK list goes down from 39 to 14, although fatalities are not reduced quite as much since a lot of glider-glider collissions were non-fatal.
