The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) will target general aviation incident reporting levels after a safety analysis showed the sector generally under-reports.
The report titled Aviation Occurence Statistics 2003-2012, released this week, showed that although general aviation makes up 90% of aircraft on the Australian Civil Register and 40% of hours flown, GA incidents represented only 30% of all reports made for that period.
By comparison, the air transport fleet makes up only 3% of aircraft on the register, but over 5000 incidents were reported for the sector in 2012.
"Despite the larger size of general aviation compared to air transport in both fleet size and number of departures," the report states, "there are comparatively few occurrence reports sent to the ATSB involving general aviation aircraft. In 2012, there were 3134 GA aircraft involved in 3000 occurrences reported to the ATSB.
"A major challenge for the ATSB in its charter to improve transport safety is that there is a lower level of awareness in the general aviation community of the need to report safety matters, and what constitutes a reportable transport safety matter.
"Underreporting of safety matters has been identified as one of the ATSB’s SafetyWatch priorities for improving transport safety in Australia.
"Future amendments to the Transport Safety Investigation Act 2003 (TSI Act) and Regulations intend to clarify what industry needs to report, in order to make reporting clearer and less onerous for pilots and operators alike.
"It is hoped that these changes, along with improved engagement with the general aviation community by the ATSB (through programs such as the popular Avoidable Accidents series) will help to reduce underreporting of incidents."
Serious incidents reported in general aviation increased from 49 in 2003 to 158 in 2012, an increase of 222%. A total of 977 reported incidents were classified as "serious".
Other GA Statistics 2003-2012 (does not include RA-Aus aircraft)
- Serious Injury Accidents: 98
- Fatal Accidents: 158
- Fatalities: 249