In what was described as a “really encouraging trend,” the rate of near–controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) occurrences in business aviation operations declined sharply in 2017 from the average of the three previous years, according to a presentation at Flight Safety Foundation’s 63rd annual Business Aviation Safety Summit (BASS) in Chicago May 10–11.
In presenting a review of corporate flight operational quality assurance (C-FOQA) data for 2017 from C-FOQA Centerline, Shelby Balogh, a data and analytics scientist at GE Aviation, also noted that the rate of aircraft upset/flight exceedances was down last year against the three-year average, but that the rate still is “significantly higher” than the near-CFIT rate. For 2017, the C-FOQA data cover 75,000 flights and about 150,000 flight hours by more than 30 aircraft types.
According to Balogh, the rate of near-CFIT events declined from the three-year average of 23.2 per 10,000 flights to 14.1 in 2017. The data show…
