For the second year in a row, the fatal accident rate, the number of fatal accidents and the number of fatalities all declined in U.S. general aviation (GA) in fiscal year 2015, the 12 months ended Sept. 30, 2015, according to preliminary data released in late March by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
“While the fatal accident rate is beginning to decline, too many lives are still being lost,” FAA Deputy Administrator Mike Whitaker said in releasing the statistics. “[T]he GA Joint Steering Committee’s (GAJSC) work on voluntary safety measures is making a difference.” The GAJSC was formed in the mid-1990s and recently renewed its efforts to combat GA fatal accidents, FAA said.
Reducing GA fatalities is a top priority of the agency, and its goal is to reduce the fatal accident rate by 10 percent over a 10-year period (2009–2018), FAA said in a fact sheet on its website . FAA said it is focused on reducing GA accidents by using a primarily non-regulatory, proac…
