Enhancing General Aviation Safety

Flying and handling qualities are, per se, an important aspect of opera­tional safety. But many other issues affect safety as well. The GA airplane of the postwar era was very different from its prewar predecessor—gone was fabric and wood or steel tube, with some small engine and a two – bladed fixed-pitch propeller. Instead, many were sleek all-metal mono­planes with retractable landing gears, near-or-over-200-mph cruising speeds, and, as noted in the previous section, often challenging and demanding flying and handling qualities. In November 1971, NASA spon­sored a meeting at the Langley Research Center to discuss technologies that might be applied to future civil aviation in the 1970s and beyond. Among the many papers presented was a survey of GA by Jack Fischel and Marvin Barber of the Flight Research Center.[835] Barber and Fischel offered an incisive survey and synthesis of applicable technologies, including the then-new concept of the supercritical wing, which was of course applicable to propeller design as well. They addressed opportu­nities to employ new structural design concepts and materials advances (as were then beginning to be explored for military aircraft). Boron and graphite composites, which could be laid up and injection molded, prom­ised to reduce both weight and labor costs, offering higher strength – to-weight ratios than conventional aluminum and steel construction. They noted the potentiality of increasingly reliable and cheap gas tur­bine engines (and the then-fashionable rotary combustion engine as well), and improved avionics could provide greater utility and safety for pilots of lower flight experience. Barber and Fischel concluded that,

On the basis of current and projected near-future tech­nology, it is believed that the main technology effort in the next decade will be devoted to improving the

economy, performance, utility, and safety of General Aviation aircraft.[836]

Of these, the greatest challenges involved safety. By the early 1970s, the fatality rate for GA was 10 times higher per passenger miles than that of automobiles.[837] Many accidents were caused by pilots exceeding their flying abilities, leading one manufacturing executive to ruefully remark at a NASA conference, "If we don’t soon find ways to improve the safety of our airplanes, we are going to be putting placards on the airplanes which say ‘Flying airplanes may be hazardous to your health.’”[838] Alarmed, NASA set an aviation safety goal to reduce fatality rates by 80 percent by the mid-1980s.[839] While basic changes in pilot training and practices could accomplish a great deal of good, so, too, could better understanding of GA safety challenges to create aircraft that were easier and more toler­ant of pilot error, together with sub-systems such as advanced avionics and flight controls that could further enhance flight safety. Underpinning all of this was a continuing need for the highest quality information and analysis that NASA research could furnish. The following examples offer an appreciation of some of the contributions NACA-NASA researchers made confronting some of the major challenges to GA safety.