Having heard news year after year of multiple incidents of single engine prop plane crashes locally in the news, sometimes student flights, and horrible tragedies of whole families and friends in crashes in bad weather usually involving a single prop plane. I'm wondering which is statistically safer to fly if one becomes a private pilot?

 

A single engine prop plane?

ex: Cessna 172

 

Dual prop.? turboprop?

ex: Beechcraft, king air

 

Private turbojet?

Cessna Citation, Mustang. Gulfstreams, Learjet?

 

 

I've rarely heard local news accidents and crashes of private jets. I think just once. (A Learjet missed in the dark of a small municipal airport, crashlanded , mostly damaged gear). It's always another single prop, usually a Cessna crash in the local news. Or am I just missing those reports of private jet crashes?

My understanding of the topic is this: to get a PPL(A) You do not need a lot of practice. Thus, Your decision making is usually far from perfect (go/no go decision in bad weather for example). More people can afford PPL(A) than ATPL, I know very small amount of people who can hire a Lear, Citation or Gulf, but pretty large number of casual Single Engine Prop flyers.

There are similarities to the car business... I am driving a very rare car in Poland (according to the dealer, only 50 sold plus ~150 privately imported) and haven't seen or heard any car accident with the car involved. Does this alone makes the car more safe? Hell no.

 

I believe NTSB has detailed reports available, please dig via their pages to found more statistics.

the latest NTSB figures show GA accident rates to be 6.51/ 100,000 flight hours./ The equivalent for schedule flights under Part 121 is 0.162. That's a factor of 40.

 

http://www.ntsb.gov/data/table1_2012.html