Charter flight fatalities up in the US, in 2008

There was a rise in the number of deaths in the United States in 2008 from crashes of charter flights that include medical helicopters, air taxis and tour flights. In all, 66 people died in the US in 2008 because of accidents involving 56 charter flights, the highest total since 2000, the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has said in a report.

The toll of 66 deaths in 2008 compares with 43 deaths in crashes involving the so-called on-demand flights in 2007.

According to the National Transportation Safety Board’s annual review of aviation accident statistics, medical helicopter services were involved in 4 accidents in 2008, in which 15 people died.
The accident rate among on-demand flights was 1.52 per 100,000 flight hours in 2008, and this was “almost unchanged” from the accident rate of 1.54 per 100,000 flight hours in 2007, according to the NTSB.

The federal aviation safety agency’s figures revealed that accidents related to general aviation took the highest toll in air travel – accounting for 495 of the 564 fatalities in the United States in 2008.

The United States witnessed a total of 1,559 accidents, 275 of which involved fatalities, in 2008 in the general-aviation sector, including various personal flights and business flights that are not run by the commercial airlines.

In 2008, there were 495 fatalities related to general aviation – which was one less than the figure for 2007.

In all, 20 large commercial carriers were involved in 20 accidents in 2008 – down from 26 accidents in 2007 – but there were no deaths. These large commercial carriers flew 753 million passengers on 10.6 million flights, the NTSB report said.

There were seven accidents in 2008 involving commuter airlines, which often fly smaller aircraft. Again, there were no fatalities. The United States-based commuter airlines made 581,000 flights in 2008.

No deaths occurred in cargo-related accidents, according to the US aviation safety agency said.

According to the United States National Transportation Safety Board’s statistics on aviation accidents, commercial aviation in the US “had been having an uncommonly quiet period” – as measured by aviation-related deaths – for the last two years.

However, the NTSB added, there were two “high-profile accidents” in 2009 – the first one in February 2009, when a commuter turboprop plane crashed into a home outside Buffalo, New York, in which 50 were killed.

The second was in March 2009, when a small plane crashed in Butte, Montana, resulting in the death of 14 people, including many children.

In a statement, Mark Rosenker, acting chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said that “while the overall aviation safety record in the United States is among the best in the world, the accident statistics for 2008 reveal a mixed picture.”

The aviation safety agency, Rosenker added, was particularly concerned with the sharp rise in the number of fatalities in on-demand air charter operations and there was a lot of room for improvement in the field of charter flights.

Mark Rosenker went to say in the statement that the National Transportation Safety Board continued to do everything it could in order to identify the issues related to aviation safety and to advocate adoption of the agency’s recommendations meant to make the skies safer.