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eleven‑year timeframe, including the one occurred in 2014
2
. LOC‑I is also the safety risk area resulting in the big‑
gest number of fatalities in Commercial Air Transport, not only within the European context but also world‑wide.
For this reason, this chapter includes a more detailed analysis on this safety risk area.
During the period 2004-2013, there were 4 fatal accidents involving fire post‑impact (F‑POST) and three fatal
accidents involving the failure or malfunction of one of the non‑poweplant systems of the aircraft (SCF‑NP). All
F‑POST occurrences involved situations where the fire developed as a consequence of the impact, leading to a re‑
duction in the likely survivability of the crew and passengers on board. F‑POST is not considered a safety risk area
in its own right but is considered in with the safety issue of survivability an evacuation. Regarding the 3 fatal ac‑
cidents categorised as SCF‑NP, it is important to highlight that in all 3 accidents the aircraft system failure was
not the only cause of the accident but one of the contributors in the chain of events.
The most frequent risk areas for non‑fatal accidents were abnormal runway contact (ARC), ground handling
(RAMP) and failure or malfunction of aircraft system components (SCF), respectively. ARC includes hard, fast,
off‑centred or overweighed landings, tail or wing strikes during landing or take‑off, and wheels‑up landing. ARC
excludes the collapse of the landing gear during take‑off or landing. All the ARC non‑fatal accidents were classi‑
fied as such due to the substantial damage caused to the aircraft. In the cases of the RAMP non‑fatal accidents
this involved either ground personnel being seriously injured and/or the aircraft being substantially damaged
during the ground handling of the aircraft. In the case of SCF‑NP, most of the accidents relate to problems with
the landing gear that occurred during landing.
MAC/Airprox (MAC) was by far the most significant risk area for serious incidents, which involved the significant
loss of separation between two aircraft posing a potential risk of collision. In addition, SCF‑NP also featured as
a key risk area with the previously mentioned landing gear problems, depressurisation and technical issues with
the flight controls being the most frequent types of event.
2 Accident MD-80 EC‑LTV in Mali. Although the Investigation is still on‑going there is sufficient evidence to qualify the accident as
a loss of control in‑flight (LOC‑I).