ABSTRACT
This investigation focused on the identification and analyses of factors that are potentially associated with Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFTT) accidents involving air taxi, regional and major carriers. The study considered 156 fatal CFIT accidents that occurred in the 1988-1994 time frame. Contributory factors related to flight crew, environment, airport and approach, ATC, aircraft equipment and air carrier (organisational) have been analysed. Results indicate that Africa and Latin America are the ICAO regions with the highest CFIT risk for major operators. Descent and approach phase accidents accounted for around 70% of the total sample. Almost 60% of the approach accidents involved non-precision approaches. A high proportion of the accidents occurred in areas without high terrain. Procedural, situational awareness, tactical decision making and monitoring/challenging were the dominant crew error types. The data shows that one-fifth of the accidents involved inadvertent VFR flight into IMC. One disturbing finding is that 75% of the accident aircraft were not equipped with a Ground Proximity Warning System.
