Everything about General Aviation totally explained
General aviation (abbr.
GA) is one of two categories of
civil aviation.
General aviation refers to all flights other than
military and
scheduled airline flights, both
private and
commercial. General aviation flights range from
gliders and
powered parachutes to large, non-scheduled cargo
jet flights. As a result, the majority of the world's air traffic falls into this category, and most of the world's airports serve general aviation exclusively.
In the
United States, there are 5,288 community
airports, almost all of which exclusively serve general aviation aircraft. According to the U.S.
Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, general aviation provides more than one percent of the United States'
GDP, accounting for 1.3 million jobs in
professional services and
manufacturing.
General aviation covers a huge range of activities, both commercial and non-commercial, including private flying,
flight training,
air ambulance,
police aircraft,
aerial firefighting,
air charter,
bush flying,
gliding and many others.
Regulation and safety
Most countries have authorities that oversee all
civil aviation, including general aviation, adhering to the standardized codes of the
International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Examples include the
Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in
Great Britain, the
Luftfahrt-Bundesamt (LBA) in
Germany,
Transport Canada in
Canada,
Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in
India and the
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the
United States. Since it includes both non-scheduled commercial operations and private operations, with aircraft of many different types and sizes, and pilots with a variety of different training and experience levels, it isn't possible to make blanket statements about the
regulation or
safety record of general aviation. At one extreme, in most countries
business jets and large
cargo jets face most of the same regulations as
scheduled air transport and fly mostly to the same airports. Commercial
bush flying and
air ambulance operations normally don't operate under as heavy a regulatory burden, and often only use small airports or off-airport strips, where there's less governmental oversight. Nonetheless they must obey the same regulations as any other type of flying.
Aviation
accident rate statistics are necessarily estimates. According to the U.S.
National Transportation Safety Board, in 2005 general aviation in the United States (excluding charter) suffered 1.31 fatal accidents for every 100,000 hours of flying in that country, compared to 0.016 for scheduled airline flights. In Canada, recreational flying accounted for 0.7 fatal accidents for every 100,000 hours, while air taxi accounted for 1.0 fatal accident for every 100,000 hours.
Further Information
Get more info on 'General Aviation'.
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