The International Business Aviation Council (IBAC), a leading business aviation organization, is very concerned about the high incidence of navigation errors made by business jet pilots on oceanic flights.
IBAC is also concerned that business-aviation pilots allow their airplanes to stray from assigned altitudes, that there are more than 90 accidents each year involving business aircraft, and that there is a growing global shortage of experienced pilots and mechanics.
Business aviation has experienced unprecedented growth this decade. In 2000, there were approximately 10,000 business aircraft operators worldwide. Today, there are 17,000. The global business aircraft fleet consists of 27,000 turbine airplanes (jets and turboprops), of which 68 percent belong to U.S. operators.
Errors and accidents
“IBAC is very concerned about the number of errors committed by pilots flying on oceanic routes,” said Donald Spruston, IBAC’s Director General, in an interview on Tuesday.
Most of the navigation errors have occurred over the North Atlantic, the busiest region of oceanic airspace in the world. There are hundreds of airliners and dozens of business jets flying between North America and Europe each day.
In a safety document published last year, IBAC expressed concern that business aircraft operations over the North Atlantic "have a disproportionately high number of gross navigation errors (GNEs) and significant height deviations."
Asked about the pilot errors, Spruston said, "We encourage training for crews that are flying internationally." He explained that while airline pilots fly oceanic routes on a regular basis, some business aviation pilots do so infrequently because the companies for which they fly send personnel overseas on corporate aircraft only a few times each year.
Pilot training for oceanic flights
International flight-operations training is provided by companies in the U.S. and other countries. A typical course lasts two to three days. Spruston said that IBAC has distributed a checklist to business aircraft operators that fly over oceanic areas to ensure that pilots are properly trained.
Pilot training includes checking the navigation data entered into the airplane’s flight management system. The training includes a procedure where one pilot enters the data and the other checks it for accuracy. Pilots have entered incorrect latitude and/or longitude information, resulting in their aircraft flying to a navigation point not on their assigned route.
An even more worrying trend than navigation errors, which modern air traffic control systems detect, is the fact that 53 percent of accidents involving business jets occur while landing. Some 18 percent of business jet accidents happen on takeoff and 10 percent on approach.
"The relatively high percentage of accidents during landing compared to other phases of flight is of significant concern to us," Spruston said. IBAC has been working with the National Business Aviation Association in the U.S. and other organizations to determine how to reduce the number of business aircraft accidents.
According to the IBAC document 'Business Aviation Safety Strategy: A Blueprint for Making a Safe System Safer,' published last year, between 2001 and 2005 there were 510 accidents worldwide involving business aircraft, 160 of them fatal. The total number of business aircraft departures for the period was just under 32.2 million.
"The accident rate trend for business aviation over the past five years, using a running five year average, has no statistically significant change," according to the IBAC publication.
Spruston emphasized that the safety record of business aviation — which is comprised of corporate aviation, on-demand air taxi/charter operators and owner-operated airplanes — is as good as that of the airlines.
Pilot and aircraft mechanic shortage
Aircraft operators around the world, including some in business aviation, have been affected by a shortage of aircrew and aircraft mechanics during the past few years. Large numbers of retiring pilots and aircraft maintenance personnel have coincided with substantial growth in airline and business jet travel in Asia, the Middle East and other parts of the world. Because the demand for such travel continues to rise, there are more job vacancies globally than experienced pilots and aircraft mechanics to fill them.
"Business aviation operators are indeed generally finding that there is a shortage of both pilots and maintenance personnel. It is not reaching crisis stage yet but we are definitely seeing an increase in the level of concern by our operators," Spruston wrote in an e-mail.
"The extension of the retirement age for commercial airline pilots (in the U.S.) will likely help in the short term but the problem will not go away," he added. "We will be working with the Flight Safety Foundation and IATA (International Air Transport Association) to try to find solutions."
http://www.aviation.com/safety/080529-business-aviation-safety-concerns.html
Fonte: Flight Safety Information 19/06/2008
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