General aviation
General aviation (GA) encompasses all civil aviation other than scheduled airline flightsgovernment aviation.It includes everything fromprivately-owned light single-engine aircraftbusiness jets, news gathering, pipeline patrol, emergency medical flights, crop-dusting, rotocraft, sport ballooningmany other aerial activities.
Most oftrafficgeneral aviationflown under Visual Flight Rules (VFR)contrastairline traffic whichmostly flown by referenceInstrument Flight Rules (IFR) wherever ground facilities adequately support that typenavigation. The ground facilities neededmost general aviation flightsgenerally less sophisticated than those required byarmed forces or airlines operating scheduled flights, but theremany differences betweensmaller grass aerodromesthose capableacceptinglarger corporate aircraft on international flights. Somethese differences simply reflectdifferent speedscapabilitiesaircraft typescommon use, whilst others reflect regulations imposedsafeguardsafetypilots, passengersnearby communities.
All public-use airports, including airports whichserved by commercial carriers, have some general aviation traffic, although GA users inUnited Statessubjectuser fees atlarger airports.
The following statisticsfromUS Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Factbook2001:
Numbersaircraft by type -------------------------------------- Piston 170,500 Turboprop 5,800 Jet 7,000 -------------------------------------- 183,300
Numbersaircraft by typeflying -------------------------------------- Corporate 11,000 Business 25,200 Personal 148,200 Instructional 14,900 Flight 4,300 Aerial observation 5,100 External load 200 Other work 1,800 Siteseeing 900 Air tour 300 Air taxi 3,700 Air medical 900 Other 1,000 -------------------------------------- 217,500
Numberspilots by certificate type -------------------------------------- Private 243,823 Commercial 12,502 ATP 144,702 -------------------------------------- 612,274
Estimated total hours flown under General Aviation rules CFR.91: 29,000,000Further information can be found in"Aviation Safety Foundation Nall Report" whichreleased each year byAviation Safety Foundation (ASF) based on data from National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reports.Numbersaccidents2001 by typeoperation --------------------------------------- Air Taxi 72 Other General Aviation 1721
See also
