While the accident and fatality rate in GA shows a slow decline over recent years, the cost in human lives, personal injury, and aircraft and collateral damage remains high. On average there are 2,200 formally reported accidents per year representing 5.5 accidents per 100,000 hours flown with a fatality rate of around 400 per annum in USA alone, or just over 1 death per every 100,000 hours (according to a 2010 US National Transportation and Safety Board report).

In the great majority of these accidents, the primary or contributory cause was attributed to human errors such as missing important checks, missing vital warning indications through poor instrument scan, lack of positional awareness in the flight-envelope, mishandling, and distraction.

This is not the complete story, however.  The statistics hide thousands of incidents and near-catastrophes that go unreported each year: incidents and occurrences where human errors could so easily have resulted in a serious accident but for fortuitous circumstances or a just-in-time realization.  In such cases the pilot will have been lucky to have got away with a fright or embarrassment.

In the end, it is the pilot’s competence and the exercise of good airmanship that will keep him out of trouble.  But an essential attribute of these is a continuous and acute awareness of aircraft and system state as well as where he and his aircraft are in relation to the permitted operational and environmental envelope.

AeroHydro brings its military cockpit design and test-flying expertise to the General Aviation fleet in developing safety-enhancing instruments and systems to assist the pilot in these respects and thus reduce the number of accidents.