Impact of gender, age and experience of pilots on general aviation accidents

▶ This study analyzes factors contributing to general aviation (GA) fatal and non-fatal accidents in US for about 40,000 accidents from 1983-2002. We adopt a series of statistical analyses to identify the impact of pilots' age, gender and experience on GA accidents. ▶ The study shows that age and gender of pilots do not contribute to pilot errors. However, pilots' experiences proved to be statistically significant indicating that less experienced pilots are more likely to make an error that causes an accident. ▶ The statistical analyses show that male pilots are more at risk of being involved in a fatal accident than female pilots. Furthermore, it seems that the likelihood of pilots to be involved in a fatal accident increases with the pilot's experience and age. ▶ Regression analyses identify associations between combined pilots' ages, genders and experiences on pilots' errors and fatal accidents. Age and gender were not identified to be significant contributing factors. However, pilots' experiences were found to be statistically significant, suggesting that more experienced pilots are less likely to be involved in an accident caused by pilot error. ▶ The important managerial implication from this study is that there should be no discrimination between male and female pilots, or between young and senior pilots up to 60 years of age with respect to their safety performance, as measured by the likelihood of pilot error.