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Aviation History
1973
1973 - 0145.PDF
FLIGHT International, 18 January 1973 AIR SAFETY A bird disintegrates against a test specimen of the A.300B, windscreen during development work at Triplex, one of the thousands of struc tural tests needed to ensure the design integrity of present passenger transport aircraft A small step back 1972 records reviewed by HUGH FIELD FEW YEARS HAVE ENDED with quite the blaze of publicity attending air safety as did 1972. In the United Kingdom the detailed vivisection of British European Airways has made daily headlines in our newspapers as the inquiry into the loss of a Trident near Heathrow in June has plodded—seemingly endlessly—on. The attention of the world was aroused when, in the closing days of the year, an Eastern Air Lines TriStar crashed near Miami. Certainly, 1972 saw some dramatic accidents and the total passenger fatality figure of 1,944 on scheduled and non-scheduled public transport operations is substantially higher than the figure for any previous year. Icao has postulated a scheduled traffic growth of 13 per cent during 1972 (using passenger-kilometers flown as the yardstick). If that growth had been applied to the previous year's fatality figure we could have anticipated a total of about 1,100 deaths in 1972 and it is against that projection that we have to consider the total of 1,285 actually achieved. The question of whether the world's airlines are becoming safer brooks only one answer—unpalatable as it may be, they are not. Icao statistics suggest that 90 per cent of world air transport is flown by turbojet aircraft and the increasing proportion of these which are wide-body types with large passenger capacity is beginning to have a significant effect on the average load per aircraft. After six years during which the figure climbed slowly from 51 to 57 it rose sharply to 64 in 1972. Clearly the risk in terms of accidents is that the death roll for each total loss will increase. Study of 1972 accident details reveals a statistical problem which increasingly makes comparisons between years less valid. The once-clear dividing line between scheduled and non-scheduled flights is becoming difficult to discern and it is sometimes necessary to use circum stantial evidence in order to decide into which category to place a particular flight. A recent example is provided by the loss of an Aeroflot 11-62 at Moscow on October 13. The aircraft was said to have flown from Paris to Moscow via Leningrad, a route on which the carrier operates a once-weekly service with Tu-104s. Il-62s are, however, used on the Paris-Moscow direct service; it is quite possible that the aircraft was part-chartered to call at Leningrad but on the evidence that the accident occurred on a day when no scheduled flight was due one must assume that Number of fatal accidents and passenger fatalities Turbo-jet, turbo-prop and piston-engine aircraft, scheduled air services, 1964-72. (Total, International arrd Domestic) Classification Fatal passenger accidents Turbo- Turbo Piston Total •jet •propeller -engined 1964 3 12 10 25 1965 5 2 18 25 1966 7 62 183,4 31 1967 13 7 10 30 1968 9 155 11 35 1969 10 11 11 32 19701 8 15 6 > 29 197H 7 12 14 33 19726 11 19 11 41 Total for 9 years 73 99 109 281 Passengers killed Turbo-jet Turbo-propeller Piston-engined 136 274 206 249 35 400 451 217 333 379 132 167 328 436 148 490 120 336 333, 399 4$ 460 394 113 651 521 113 3477 2528 1863 Total 616 1001 779 967 1285 7868 1. Data for 1970, 1971, and 1972 include the USSR. Data for earlier years do not. 2. Includes 1 helicopter accident with 20 passenger fatalities. 3. Includes one mid-air collision between two piston-engined aircraft (counted as one accident in the total). 4. Includes 1 helicopter accident with 2 passenger fatalities. 5. Includes 2 helicopter accidents with 38 passenger fatalities. 6. Includes 1 jet/iet collision, 1 turboprop/turboprop collision and 1 piston/piston collision (each counted as one accident in the total).
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