Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation, said yesterday that this year's global aviation safety performance seemed lackluster compared to that of last year.
"Overall, safety performance for commercial jets remains excellent, but not as good as last year," he said at the 15th National Flight Safety Conference in Taipei, jointly hosted by the Aviation Safety Council (ASC) and the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA).
Voss' presentation showed that 13 accidents have already happened from January to October of this year, in which a China Airlines' airplane explosion in Naha was listed.
Voss was referring to a China Airlines Boeing 737-800 airliner that caught fire moments after landing AT Naha Airport, Okinawa, in August. All 165 passengers on board escaped unscathed.
A total of nine aviation accidents happened worldwide last year, he said.
According to Voss, an aviation incident was classified as an accident either when the aircraft is destroyed or there are multiple fatalities to the occupants. An accident also refers to the situation where there is one fatality and the aircraft is substantially damaged.
Statistics in his presentation indicated that the major accident rate has been decreasing from 31 per million departures in 1996 to 11 per million departures last year.
Voss also pointed out that accidents as a result of commercial jet loss of control and turbo propeller controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) dominate the fatality numbers this year.
Voss added that more than 50 percent of all major accidents this year occurred during the "approach and landing" phase of an aircraft's operation, which begins when an airplane news its destination airport and prepares for landing. Meanwhile, he said more efforts have been made to reduce the risks in runway safety.
The council originally decided to cancel the conference this year in order to host the 60th Annual International Air Safety Seminar, which is deemed one of the most important events by flight safety authorities around the world.
However, the ASC was informed by the Flight Safety Foundation (FSF) in June that it had to forgo the right to host the seminar because of China's opposition to the arrangement. Eventually, the council decided to resume the opening of its annual Flight Safety Conference.
Besides Voss, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Ambassador Edward Stimpson and former FSF president Stuart Matthews also attended the conference yesterday.
Matthews called for Taiwan's participation in an initiative called the Global Aviation Safety Road Map, which was created to coordinate and guide aviation safety policies among members of ICAO.
"We invite Taiwan to embrace the road map," Matthews said.
There are 77 incidents of Taiwanese travelers going missing in China between January last year and last month, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) said. More than 40 remain unreachable, SEF Secretary-General Luo Wen-jia (羅文嘉) said on Friday. Most of the reachable people in the more than 30 other incidents were allegedly involved in fraud, while some had disappeared for personal reasons, Luo said. One of these people is Kuo Yu-hsuan (郭宇軒), a 22-year-old Taiwanese man from Kaohsiung who went missing while visiting China in August. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office last month said in a news statement that he was under investigation
An aviation jacket patch showing a Formosan black bear punching Winnie the Pooh has become popular overseas, including at an aviation festival held by the Japan Air Self-Defense Force at the Ashiya Airbase yesterday. The patch was designed last year by Taiwanese designer Hsu Fu-yu (徐福佑), who said that it was inspired by Taiwan’s countermeasures against frequent Chinese military aircraft incursions. The badge shows a Formosan black bear holding a Republic of China flag as it punches Winnie the Pooh — a reference to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — who is dressed in red and is holding a honey pot with
Celebrations marking Double Ten National Day are to begin in Taipei today before culminating in a fireworks display in Yunlin County on the night of Thursday next week. To start the celebrations, a concert is to be held at the Taipei Dome at 4pm today, featuring a lineup of award-winning singers, including Jody Chiang (江蕙), Samingad (紀曉君) and Huang Fei (黃妃), Taipei tourism bureau official Chueh Yu-ling (闕玉玲) told a news conference yesterday. School choirs, including the Pqwasan na Taoshan Choir and Hngzyang na Matui & Nahuy Children’s Choir, and the Ministry of National Defense Symphony Orchestra, flag presentation unit and choirs,
China is attempting to subsume Taiwanese culture under Chinese culture by promulgating legislation on preserving documents on ties between the Minnan region and Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said yesterday. China on Tuesday enforced the Fujian Province Minnan and Taiwan Document Protection Act to counter Taiwanese cultural independence with historical evidence that would root out misleading claims, Chinese-language media outlet Straits Today reported yesterday. The act is “China’s first ad hoc local regulations in the cultural field that involve Taiwan and is a concrete step toward implementing the integrated development demonstration zone,” Fujian Provincial Archives deputy director Ma Jun-fan (馬俊凡) said. The documents
RSS