Commercial Aviation Safety and Risk VIRGINIA STOUFFER

Airline safety research affects policy recommendation , o the scale of a safety index creates important effects. Indices of afety and airline financial health , safety and airline size, safety and government oversight, and the public perception of safety are surveyed. Conclusions depend on data selection and statistical techniques. Aircraft accident are infrequent and random making a.ny testing difficult. Overall, time progression and a rough airline size-safety relation, with importallt qual.ifiers, are correlated with safety. The literature survey raises recurrent questions that are analyz.ed further in statistical testing of recent aviation accidents . National Transportation Safety Board accident investigations report data for 1966 to 1990. Statistical te t measUie the effects of deregulation , technological progress, Congress, and FAA in accident prevention. Deregulation and FAA have had positive effects on airline safety above and beyond technological and time improvements , though FAA faces dimini hing return .