A study of recent general aviation (GA) accidents in the United States found little evidence that GA safety was diminished during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic.1
The study, which searched the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) database for general aviation accidents in 2019 and 2020, found little difference between the rate of 22 accidents per 100,000 flight hours – recorded before the pandemic, in January and February 2020 – and the rate of 19 accidents per 100,000 flights hours recorded in March through October 2020, as the pandemic spread across the country.
Another set of comparisons examined accidents that occurred each month in 2020 and those that occurred in the same months in 2019 and found “no evidence of over-representation of accidents during the pandemic (March‒October 2020) relative to the corresponding months in 2019,” according to a report on the study, published in the October 2021 issue of Aerospace Me…
