Another Sunday evening, another gloomy headline

News reports indicate that a light aircraft came to grief near Ashford today, with one fatality and another with serious injuries.

Every accident is one too may, but we seem to be seeing a really bad run at present. Despite various measures introduced as part of JAA, the accident rate has not seemed to fall in any meaningful way, around one per 40,000 flying hours.

I recall a very bad year which had 28 fatalities ( Bi-annual Flight Reviews arose out of the need to ‘do something’ ) and I suppose that if the combined serious and fatal incidents of light aircraft, gliding and microlights are lumped together, that might come to 30 or 40 ‘reports’ per year. Logic would suggest that most will occur at weekends, and maybe concentrated into the more clement spring/summer months. Logical or not though, its bad.

As we always seem to say on these occasions, I suppose we have to wait for the AIIB report.