On Sun, 29 Oct 2006 03:34:05 GMT, Jose wrote:

So, each year a bit less than one percent of the fleet bites it. The
rate seems to be increasing slightly in the last few years, but the
sketchiness of this data precludes a conclusion based on that.

To compare with the Cessna fleet (bearing in mind the errors in the year
data due to registrations), I'll just add the last five years of fleet
size, getting something like 125,000. Five years of accidents at a 3/4%
rate (the last five years of the Cirrus rate, eyeballing it) would imply
something like a thousand C-172 crashes.

So, were there "something like a thousand" C-172 crashes in the last
five years?

From January 1st, 2002 to December 31st, 2004, the GA average fleet accident
rates were as follows:

Overall: 0.58%
Homebuilts: 0.80%
Rotorcraft: 1.63%
Robinson: 3.83%
Cessnas: 0.56%
Cessna 172: 0.62%
Piper: 0.47%
Piper Super Cubs: 1.02%
Beech: 0.45%
Beech 33, 35, & 36: 0.43%

To get the above results, the total number of accidents in the three-year period
were divided by the total aircraft of that type registered on 1 January 2005,
and the result divided by three to produce a yearly average.

Note that the Beech, Cessna, and Piper figures may be artificially low, due to
old aircraft that are still on the registry but not actively flying. Aircraft
can be abandoned or even scrapped without telling the FAA, hence they remain on
the register. The FAA is currently working on weeding out these old
registrations.

I haven't run the fleet accident rates for the Cirrus....guess maybe I'll have
to take a look. If, as you say, the accident rate is about 0.75%, that's in the
ballpark of the 172.

Ron Wanttaja