When accidents involving celebrities occur, such as the terrible tragedy that took the singer Marília Mendonça recently, the safety of business aviation is put in check.
The press often has difficulties explaining to the public how the main concepts of this type of aviation work, and society ends up poorly informed about the safety of small planes.
Therefore, ABAG, representative of business aviation in our country, makes public the main safety aspects of this segment.
What is business aviation
The best way to define it is by exclusion: with the exception of military aviation (aircraft operated by the FAB, the Army and the Navy), large airliners, and sports aircraft (gliders, trikes, paragliders, gyrocopters, ultralights, etc.), all planes and helicopters ed in our country make up the business aviation fleet – in addition to the 88.664 drones for professional use and the future class of e-VTOL (electric takeoff and vertical landing aircraft), which will also are or will be part of the segment, but will not be addressed in this article.
In October 2021, according to data from the RAB - Brazilian Aeronautical Registry of ANAC, we had 9.214 certified aircraft operating in business aviation in Brazil, while commercial aviation had only 478 aircraft.
In other words: more than 95% of the certified aircraft in Brazil are business aviation. Most of the segment's fleet is made up of propeller-powered aircraft, with 63% referring to those with a combustion engine and 15% are those with a turboprop engine. Helicopters for 14% and jets for 8%.
Private aviation, whose operator is an individual or an entity not related to aviation (banks, industries, agricultural enterprises, etc.), is the largest in the country, with 69% of all planes and helicopters in business aviation. Air taxis for 6,7% of the national fleet, while public istration (non-military aircraft) has 2,8% of the units. Instruction's share is 8,5% of the total and other specialized air services, especially agricultural aviation, have the remaining 13%.
Differences in certification: airline vs. air taxi vs. private aviation
According to ANAC rules, which in turn follow recommendations from ICAO - International Civil Aviation Organization, a body linked to the UN that governs civil aviation worldwide, public air transport must have a more robust regulatory structure than private aviation, due to the concept of “information asymmetry”, present in airline and air taxi operations.
When a enger buys an airline ticket or charters an aircraft, it is understood that this consumer is unaware of the particularities of the operation conducted by the company that is providing the air service.
There is no way of knowing, for example, how the aircraft is maintained, the qualification and training of the crew or the planning of the flight; therefore, there is a high asymmetry of information between the airline and the enger.
In private aviation, in which only the owner or operator of the aircraft has the right to use, the scenario is the opposite: this is the person who hires and pays for maintenance services for the aircraft, the crew and their training, and so on.
Therefore, it is said that in this type of air transport there is less asymmetry of information between the enger and the owner or operator – who, in fact, is himself. You know the condition of your car, but what about the taxi you call on the street, do you know that too? It's similar.
All regulation is based on this concept, and it is for this reason that public air transport has additional safety rules in relation to private aviation: the “system” – that is: the regulations and the supervision of the operation – supplies the greatest asymmetry of airline and air taxi information.
Another difference is the size of the aircraft: if public transport is carried out by planes with 20 seats for engers or more, even stricter rules are required, as the risk to society is much greater.
Therefore, the regulation of private aviation has only the basic operational rules; public air transport carried out by air taxi, with aircraft with less than 20 seats, follows stricter rules; and the type of large airlines (Boeing, Airbus, etc., present in large airports), even stricter rules: this occurs due to the high asymmetry of information combined with the greater risk to society in this last type of operations.
Differences between airports used by airlines and business aviation
One of the most important differences between airline and business aviation is connectivity. While the former serves just over 100 airports previously approved by ANAC, business aviation operates in all three thousand airfields in the country – including those that the airline uses, but not only.
Part of these small airfields are not paved or do not have navigation aids, which makes the operation more challenging for pilots. However, if it were not allowed to operate in these locations, air connectivity in our country would be extremely limited, which makes civil aviation authorities allow aircraft not belonging to the airline to land and take off on these runways.
Another important difference is that the pilots who work on the airline always operate on the same routes, as if it were a train, which only travels between certain stations always along the same tracks.
This makes the airline operation a routine, a repetition of takeoffs and landings always in the same locations, after covering the same route with the same planes.
Business aviation, on the other hand, is similar to a land taxi or an app car, in which each ride is different from the other. This, of course, also makes operations more challenging in this segment.
Security statistics in different segments
The Brazilian airline is completing 10 years without ing a single fatal accident, which is noteworthy: never before has this occurred in Brazilian aviation! Business aviation figures, although decreasing since 1979, are around 33 fatalities per year (data from the last three years).
But the first impression that business aviation would be less safe is fallacious, anyone who does not analyze aviation safety in a professional way is wrong. In the last major commercial aviation accident, which occurred with TAM, there were 199 victims, that is: more than six whole years of business aviation accidents.
Adding to this the victims of the Gol accident a year earlier, this equivalence would reach 11 years. In fact, a single accident, the crash of two Boeing 747s on the island of Tenerife (the biggest in the world to date), resulted in a balance of 583 victims. Brazilian business aviation would need 18 years to reach this number.
On the other hand, accident rates per flight hours, usually those released to the press by large airlines, are much more favorable to the airline.
But even the rates of business aviation in Brazil are extremely low: an air taxi aircraft, for example, needs to fly 22,5 million kilometers (390 trips to the moon) to suffer an accident – ing that, in small-scale aviation, size, only 1/3 of accidents are fatal.
In absolute , this number is excellent, but when compared to airlines, it looks bad, as in this segment it takes 512 million kilometers, on average, for an accident to occur. It would be like making 8 trips to Mars without any occurrence... Maybe even NASA programs don't have such an index!
So yes: it is safe to travel in small aircraft!
The security of business aviation in Brazil, when carried out lawfully, has excellent indicators, as good or even better than in the most advanced countries in the world.
And without it, we would not have air medical transport, agricultural aviation, there would be no way to train our own pilots, it would not be possible to bring medical assistance to isolated communities, and, mainly, we would not have the aforementioned air connectivity, so important for the development of the Brazil.
What unfortunately happens is that pirate air taxi operations, aircraft flying with maintenance carried out in clandestine workshops or used for smuggling and drug trafficking and other similar illegal activities, have significantly greater risks, and this ends up generating a negative impact on the segment .
Take as an example the sad accident that killed the journalist Ricardo Boechat.
Official investigations confirmed that it was a pirate air taxi operation, in an aircraft operated outside safety regulations. But the image that remains for the public is that a famous person died while flying in a small aircraft: most of the public is unaware of the details of the operation that contributed decisively to the facts. When, in fact, it involved several unacceptable violations of regulations, added to malicious actions to elude inspection.
As in other countries of continental dimensions, such as the United States, Canada and Australia, Brazil cannot do without business aviation. Without it, aeronautical training would be hampered, and we would have to bring in foreign crew to operate our airliners and planes in several specific segments, such as off-shore aviation (mainland connection - oil platforms by helicopter), as China does. .
Air connectivity, we reiterate once more (but it never hurts to repeat), would be severely hampered.
Therefore, we need to dismantle the fallacy that it is not safe enough to travel in small aircraft. This is bad for all aviation, it harms Brazil, and it instils absolutely unnecessary fear in the population that uses these means of transport. What we need is to fly more and more around Brazil: this is ABAG's main mission!
Street: ABAG
