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that the GA fleet has the tendency to be older on average (GA aircraft log substantially fewer hours per year than airliners, giving them a longer lifes- pan). Also, GA does not benefit as much from risk analysis. Dedicated safety departments at airlines are staffed by full-time professionals who tap into data from thousands of flights per day. This data provides constructive feed- back into training programs. Part 91 remains something of the “Wild West” in comparison. Still, there is hope on the horizon. ADS-B data provides more information for accident inves- tigators who research small aircraft crashes. Better data will hopefully drive emerging training standards and lead to new technologies.
Automation is a big contributor to safety, but up until now, it has occurred mostly in bite-sized pieces. As a case example, GPWS was developed to ad- dress a specific threat (controlled f light into terrain). Later it was “enhanced” with several additional modes that im- proved pilot responses. Synthetic vision
takes the EGPWS solution and presents it more intuitively. Similarly, TCAS originally alerted pilots to proximate aircraft. Now it provides unambiguous directions to avoid a collision. Some aircraft will automatically f ly avoid- ance maneuvers through the autopilot. If you want to fly safer, technology has proven a highly efficient solution.
Single Pilot Operations
China Eastern Airlines recent- ly partnered in an academic pa- per about Single Pilot Operations (SPO) in conjunction with Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Much atten- tion throughout the paper is focused on the financial aspect of SPO. Likewise, a NASA Technological Interchange Meeting (TIM) focused on the issue in 2012. Again, most participants identified the primary driver of SPO to be the economic ben- efits to airlines. However, there was some disagreement as to the scale of savings (or whether it would be cheaper once the costs of new infrastructure were included).
The Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) predicts that cost savings to the airlines of SPO would amount to $15B per year worldwide. This analy- sis most likely focuses on the direct costs of first officers (a role that would be modified by SPO). More difficult to analyze are the ancillary costs re- quired to implement SPO on a broad scale. For example, a low latency, highly secure air-ground link would be required in the event a pilot became incapacitated or erratic. New air traffic control procedures would have to be incorporated as well. Multiply this on a global scale and the challenges to infrastructure are clear.
Then there is the question of equiva- lent safety. Accidents per 100,000 hours are 42 times higher in GA compared to the airlines. Corporate operators fare better, yet are still 10 times more likely to have an accident than their airline peers. SPO is undoubtedly a con- tributor to this comparative mismatch. Loss of Control In-flight (LOC-I) is a particularly deadly form of aviation
6 • TWIN & TURBINE / March 2023
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