Transportation safety issues-role of forensic modeling

This paper presents three examples of forensic analysis related to airline safety. Examples of two fatal events are the Egyptair 990 incident and the TWA8OO incident. These two examples illustrate the application of computer modeling as an aid in interpreting and understanding fatal event data. The third example illustrates the statistical analysis of the commercial airline fatality data published in the Statistical Abstract of the United States. This fatality data places the Egyptair 990 and TWA800 events into perspective. A constraint was to compare commercial aviation fatalities on a per departure basis, now in use by the NTSB National Transportation Safety Board and by the European airline industry, in contrast to the familiar, US airline industries distance travelled basis. The scope of the third example includes fatality statistics for scheduled airlines on a worldwide basis to establish an overall baseline. This part is followed by a similar analysis of the fatality data for the scheduled United States airline industry, in international and domestic passenger service. General aviation is specifically excluded since the fatality rate is almost seven times the scheduled passenger airline industry fatality rate