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- Title
General Aviation Flight Safety During the COVID-19 Pandemic.
- Authors
Boyd, Douglas D.
- Abstract
BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVE: The COVID-19 virus has caused over 582,000 deaths in the United States to date. However, the pandemic has also afflicted the mental health of the population at large in the domains of anxiety and sleep disruption, potentially interfering with cognitive function. From an aviation perspective, safely operating an aircraft requires an airman's cognitive engagement for: 1) situational awareness, 2) spatial orientation, and 3) avionics programming. Since impaired cognitive function could interfere with such tasks, the current study was undertaken to determine if flight safety for a cohort of single engine, piston-powered light airplanes was adversely affected during a period of the pandemic (March-October 2020) prior to U.S. approval of the first COVID-19 vaccine. METHODS: Airplane accidents were per the National Transportation Safety Board Access® database. Fleet times were derived using Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast. Statistics used Poisson distributions, Chi-squared/Fisher, and Mann-Whitney tests. RESULTS: Little difference in accident rate was evident between the pandemic period (March-October 2020) and the preceding (January-February) months (19 and 22 mishaps/100,000 h, respectively). Similarly, a proportional comparison of accidents occurring in 2020 with those for the corresponding months in 2019 failed to show over-representation of mishaps during the pandemic. Although a trend to a higher injury severity (43% vs. 34% serious/fatal injuries) was evident for pandemic-period mishaps, the proportional difference was not statistically significant when referencing the corresponding months in 2019. CONCLUSION: Surprisingly, using accidents as an outcome, the study herein shows little evidence of diminished flight safety for light aircraft operations during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Subjects
COVID-19 pandemic; AERONAUTICAL safety measures; UNITED States. National Transportation Safety Board; AIRCRAFT accidents; AUTOMATIC dependent surveillance-broadcast; COGNITIVE ability; COVID-19 vaccines; LIGHT aircraft
- Publication
Aerospace Medicine & Human Performance, 2021, Vol 92, Issue 10, p773
- ISSN
2375-6314
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.3357/AMHP.5876.2021