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Home-Built Aircraft Make Up Large Portion of General Aviation Accidents

May 17, 2013

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May 17, 2013

Data from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) indicates that aircraft built by hobbyists are the leading type airplane involved in General Aviation Accidents today. Their estimate show this type of aircraft was involved in 15 percent of all general aviation crashes and accounted for 20 percent of all fatalities in the same category in 2011.

This means that out of the 224 airplane accidents that occurred that year, at total of 67 passengers and pilots were killed.

Most recently, a 73-year-old man and his 51-year-old son were both killed after their home-built airplane crashed outside of Suffolk, Virginia, earlier this month. According to an article published by The Baltimore Sun, the pair were flying the Rans S6S to a festival when the plane went down for unknown reasons. Both the NTSB and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have launched investigations into the incident.

Experts attribute this high number of accidents to a growing number of hobbyists building their own planes to cut costs and achieve a sense of satisfaction with having built their aircraft themselves.

In an effort to reduce the number of accidents involving experimental and home-built aircraft, both the NTSB and the FAA are recommending more training and safety programs for those who pilot this type of aircraft.

The Aviation Accident Lawyers with Nurenberg, Paris, Heller & McCarthy are hopeful to see such measures implemented in order to decrease the number of lives that are lost to preventable aviation accidents.

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