The scene of a plane crash this weekend near Plainfield, Illinois, that killed two people VIDEO CNN's Charles Bierbauer takes a look at the risks involved in piloting small aircraft Windows Media 28K 80K

July 20, 1999
Web posted at: 2:55 a.m. EDT (0655 GMT)

In this story: General aviation record keeps improving RELATED STORIES, SITES

By Correspondent Charles Bierbauer

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- At the time of his disappearance, John F. Kennedy Jr. was piloting his own plane, just as hundreds of thousands of other private pilots in America do.

Piloting a small private aircraft, however routine it may seem, can be significantly more dangerous than flying on commercial airlines. The problem is not with the equipment, but with the pilots.

Idaho officials found two fliers dead when a small plane crashed near Boise last weekend. Two others died in a crash in Illinois. One person was killed in Florida, and three died when a helicopter crashed in Texas. All those crashes count as general aviation accidents.

In 1996, the National Transportation Safety Board counted 1,907 accidents involving small planes. In 360 of the accidents, there were fatalities, accounting for 632 deaths.

Pilots were cited as either the "cause or contributing factor" in 83 percent of the fatal accidents. According to Don Robb of Aved Flight School, "...the aircraft themselves are utterly safe. The only unsafety we have, to any degree, is in pilot experience and abilities and judgments, above all else."

All the statistics, however, are not grim. Phil Boyer, of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, said, "General aviation has had an improving safety record each and every year" since 1938, when records were first kept.

Commercial airlines flying the same routes over and over to the nation's largest, best-equipped airports have compiled an extraordinary record. They have recorded some years with no fatalities.

When small planes crash with a big name on board -- Will Rogers, Buddy Holly or John F. Kennedy Jr. -- they garner disproportionate attention. Singer John Denver was piloting a small experimental plane at the time of his fatal crash.

John F. Kennedy Jr.'s Piper Saratoga II HP was far from experimental. Aviation experts such as Boyer consider the plane a workhorse. "The propeller and engine on this aircraft are tried and true technology," Boyer said. "This model aircraft has been around for a considerable length of time."

In the last 30 years, National Transportation Safety Board officials have made more than 200 recommendations aimed at improving the safety of small planes.

One of the biggest problems they found was pilots flying with visual rules licenses, not fully trained on instruments, who got in trouble.

National Transportation Safety Board
FAA - Federal Aviation Administration

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