Nearly 1,900 occurrences involving technical failures on turboprop aircraft were reported to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) between 2012 and 2016 — about 18 percent of all turboprop safety occurrences reported during the same period, according to a new report.
The ATSB said that of the 1,894 occurrences, 417 (22 percent) involved the airplanes’ power plants. Of occurrences involving operators with a known number of flight hours, 314 occurrences were reported between 2012 and 2015. “With a combined total of just over 1.4 million flight hours for these aircraft in this timeframe, this subset equates to approximately 2.2 occurrences every 10,000 flight hours,” the ATSB said in its report, Power Plant Failures in Turboprop-Powered Aircraft, released June 15.
Of the 417 power plant occurrences, 96 percent were classified as “low-risk,” four were consi…
