Investigation into accident initiation events by flight phase, for highly inexperienced glider pilots

Despite inexperienced glider pilots having accidents at a far higher rate than average, it is unknown if accidents sustained by inexperienced pilots stem from different elements of the flight from those sustained by all other more experienced pilots. All pilot-related accidents in the British Gliding Association database (2002 - 2006) were identified and accident rates were calculated for each flight phase using exposure data derived from previous research, thereby allowing comparisons to be made on a per-flight basis. The results showed that for inexperienced pilots (10 hours and under), accidents associated with a seminal event in the approach phase occurred at 8 times the rate than for experienced pilots. For seminal events in the landing phase accidents occurred at 6 times the rate. This research demonstrates the benefit of examining the flight phase in which the seminal event of an accident occurs for better targeting of appropriate remedial actions (rather than classifying the accident by flight phase) and of the use of flying exposure measures to produce comparable accident rate data rather than simply comparing accident counts.