CDR Salamander - Time for an Aviation Safety Stand Down?

There is one thing that the aviation community is really good at—being brutally honest in mishap investigations and having little wiggle room for poor transparency in discussing why fellow aviators died.

They track their data carefully, and when something isn’t right, they find out why. Of course, there are exceptions and people who violate this tradition written in blood, but when they are discovered, they are treated like people who were caught sleeping with their sister…usually.

As such, this from Military Times got my attention.

The Navy’s data on just its own aviation mishaps shows a marked increase this year. The Naval Safety Command reported eight Class A aviation mishaps in 2024. In 2025, that total has spiked to 14.

…

The Osprey, which flies like a plane but converts to land like a helicopter, has been among the most dangerous aircraft, as the AP has reported extensively.

In addition, the new Defense Department data shows the Apache helicopter had about 4.5 times the rate of the most serious Class A accidents during the 2024 budget year compared with four years earlier.

The C-130 transport plane, a workhorse of the military, nearly doubled its rate over the same period, even as it reported safer years in between.

I’m not a fan of some of this excuse-making they got for their story.

An aviation expert noted that broader worsening trends are unlikely the result of a single factor but rather a reflection of multiple smaller issues that accumulate to create an unsafe culture.

These issues include increased operational demands, riskier aircraft like the V-22 Osprey and interruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to a significant curtailing of flying time across the military.

…

“Whether we’re talking about the end of Afghanistan, whether we talk about deployments to Djibouti, or the back and forth across Saudi Arabia to get to the Emirates, I think that as the pace (of military operations) ticks up, the mishaps are going to tick up,” Nance said.

I’m sorry, the AFG disgrace was over four years ago. Ditto COVID. If that were an issue, we’d see it then. FFS people, there is more time from the defeat of American forces in Afghanistan to today than it took for the USA to defeat Imperial Japan in WWII.

I’d really like to see the full dataset everyone is referring to, but none of the other articles out there will give it. Even the letter from Senator Warren (D-MA) does not provide the raw data. However, the article does link to some of the charts from the Navy Safety Center. Let’s look at the two that have to deal with aviation mishaps.

I’m seeing a different story—and frankly, errors from both Sen. Warren and Military Times/AP reporting while looking at the primary source data I can find. I tried Grok and ChatGPT to look for primary sources, and couldn’t find them. I have what I have though, let’s look at it.

First of all, the last data is from 2025, not 2024—and as we already see 2026 here, this is fiscal years, not calendar years. Net one below for Military Times. FY24 was actually a quite safe year.

“Aviation Mishaps”, the first slide, covers a lot more than just Flight Mishaps, which is the second slide and is that you should focus on first. Yes, the others tell a story, but we don’t have a full week to discuss things…and the article focused on Flight Mishaps, specifically the ones of greatest concern: Class A Flight Mishaps.

On the right side of the chart, see those little blue and green lines called UCI/LCI? Those are your Upper and Lower Confidence levels. If you find the data above or below, then there is something significant going on. In FY25, the mishap rate was just above it. Just.

Again, we need to see the full dataset for type/model/series (TMS). As the article mentions V-22 and C-130 especially, then what about the other TMS? Are they also that bad…especially those with the most flight hours? I would speculate just with what I am seeing here, is no, they aren’t as bad, as the aggregate is right above the UCL, which means a lot of aircraft are having normal or lower rates.

So, that means what we really need to look at is not a service-wide issue, but perhaps an issue with certain TMS.

That is your story. That is the important data.

If anyone has the FY25 TMS mishaps data, send it along please.

FY25 is worthy of concern…but a systemic issue? Probably not. Does AFG or COVID have anything to do with it?

Child, please. No.

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