While aviation in general remains an extremely safe mode of transportation, there still remains room for improvement, particularly on the business aviation side, according to Andrew Schmertz, CEO and co-founder of New York-based charter operator Hopscotch Air and chair of NATA’s charter committee. “The fact is we are still having accidents in this industry,” he said while moderating a panel on safety at the NATA Air Charter Summit earlier this week in Oklahoma City. “We have an exemplary safety record but it’s falling short of our [Part] 121 brethren.”
Panelist Brice Banning, a senior accident investigator with the NTSB, noted that the top defining accident cause for Part 135 operations from 2008 to 2022 is loss of control in flight, followed by powerplant system component failure and abnormal runway contact. “When we narrowed the data down to 2017 to 2022, we saw loss of control in flight, abnormal runway contact, and loss of control on the ground, so I think the data would suggest that the same defining events are showing up.”
While those events are among the ones reported to the NTSB, many are not. Stephan Burgess, emergency operations center manager with crisis management company Fireside Partners, said his company still responds to between two and four runway excursions a month.
“If you dip a tire into the mud and try to throttle it out and get stuck, that's maybe not reportable, but those things are happening all the time,” he told attendees, adding the trend has increased post-Covid. “For a runway excursion to hit NTSB reporting requirements, we’re talking injuries, severe aircraft damage, damage to property other than the aircraft over $25,000. So it has to be a pretty severe event.”
He attributes the trend to growing complacency. “We’re not encountering something new that we haven’t done before. We’re kind of falling away from procedures that actually do work and have worked in the past.”
Both panelists agree that the recently-mandated implementation of safety management systems (SMS) will greatly help to reduce preventable events, but the safety culture they represent must be truly embraced rather than viewed simply as another compliance item.
“There is still such a pervasive check-the-box culture, though we’re making all the right motions with SMS right now,” said Burgess. “Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons there’s still so many operators out there that have emplaced an SMS but they’re really not usng it to its full potential.”
Banning added his agency has long been a proponent of SMS. “I think it absolutely has to start at the top, but then you have to get into the trenches with your people and find out is it working on the hangar floor? Is it working in the cockpit? Are employees willing to open up and share their concerns?”