ARTICLE

October 2002

Navy Aviation Mishaps Cost $4.3 Billion Over Five Years

by Sandra I. Erwin

Aviation accidents have cost the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps $4.3 billion between 1997 and 2002.

Most of the aviation mishaps during that period—about 85 percent—were attributed to human error, said Marine Col. Dave Kerrick, a Navy Safety Center officer who spoke this month at the Tailhook convention of naval aviators.

The $4.3 billion in losses only include the direct costs, such as the actual aircraft. The Navy additionally incurred at least $20 billion to $30 billion in other “indirect” costs related to aviation accidents, such as litigation, investigations and program delays, Kerrick said. The Marine Corps V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft, for example, is at least 10 years behind schedule as a result of mishaps.

Four billion dollars worth of lost airplanes may seem huge, but the overall picture of aviation safety shows positive trends, Kerrick said. In 1954, the Navy lost 776 aircraft, compared to only 15 in 2001 and 16 in 2002.

The cause of most accidents—human error—has not changed much in the past 25 years, he said. “That is going to be the toughest nut to crack.”

Most of the mishaps today happen during training, Kerrick said. “In deployments, we are doing a fantastic job. It’s back here at home in training where we are not so focused that we are having problems.”

The human errors generally are attributed to shortfalls in training and inexperience, he added.

“We need to fund state-of-the-art simulators and data-centric systems,” said Kerrick. “Our simulators are not that great.”

The Navy Safety Center also is lobbying to get every aircraft equipped with flight data recorders. “We need deployable recorders,” he said. The Navy recently tested the so-called miniQAR, or miniature Quick Access Recorder, used in many commercial jets. It collects and stores up to 400 hours of flight data and weighs only 5.5 ounces. The QAR, made by Avionica, was tested on an F/A-18 jet fighter, said Kerrick. After a crash, he said, “You can download that data, play it in the simulator and replay the entire flight. ... We need to get those things installed in all the airplanes.”

The QAR, however, is not hardened to military standards. The F/A-18Cs, Ds and Es currently are being equipped with a crash-proof flight data recorder called DFIRS, made by DRS Technologies.

The Navy Safety Center also is working on programs to reduce the number of fatalities in the sea services. For the 1997-2001 period, 1,176 sailors and Marines died. Aviation mishaps caused only 162 of those deaths. Most of the fatalities (687) resulted from automobile accidents.

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