ACCIDENTS ASSOCIATED WITH OPERATIONS AT BUCHANAN FIELD.

We have looked at NTSB accident records for all accidents and incidents between 1983 and 1999 involving aircraft that had listed Buchanan Field as either a departure airport or an arrival airport, or had listed the owner as being based at Buchanan. (The years 1983 corresponds to the first year which the NSTB information is available online.) We counted the number of accidents and incidents per year, and located the accidents/incidents as to their location. So far, we found a total of 88 accidents and incidents. 25 (28.4%) occurred on the airport premises, 6 (6.8%) occurred within 1 mile of the airport, 2 (2.3%) occurred between 1 and 2.6 miles of the airport, 27 (30.7%) occurred in transit between Buchanan and another airport, 11 (12.5%) occurred within 1 mile of another airport, and 17 (19.3%) occurred on the premises of another airport.  The number of accidents in the last three location categories is probably under-reported due to incomplete information in the NTSB reports.  We also have reservations about the search engine of the NTSB website.  When we first performed this search a year ago, we found 49 accidents; in our second recent search of the database, we found 88.  Most of the newly found accidents fell into the last four columns.

In the table below, each accident/incident is represented by a number and a letter, such as 3n. The number indicates the number of people in the aircraft that had the accident, and the letter indicates the severity of the their injuries (3n means three people on board, "n" means no injuries). If there are different types of injuries, a slash mark "/" delineates the types of injuries. For example, 1n/1m means that the crash involved one onboard person with no injuries and one onboard person with minor injuries ("m" means minor injuries). The letter "s" indicates serious injuries, the letter "f" indicates fatalities, and the letter "g" indicates people on the ground who were involved in the accident. The 1985 Sun Valley Mall crash is indicated as 3f/4fg/16sg/62mg.

You can see the NTSB report for each accident (except some of the most recent ones) by clicking on the alpha-numeric identifier for the accident.
 

Year	Total Accidents	On Airport Accident at Buchanan	Within 1 mile of Buchanan	Between 1 and 2.6 miles of Buchanan	Between airports	Within 1 mile of another airport	On airport accident at another airport
1999	8	2n, 1n, 1n	1m		6n, 1n		1n,
1998	2				1f, 2f
1997	2						1n, 2s
1996	4	1n			2f, 1np	2fp,
1995	1				2n
1994	3	1n			3f	1s/1m,
1993	4	2n	1m		2s,	2f/2s,
1992	8		2fp	2f	2n	2m	2n, 2n, 2n, 4n
1991	6				3f, 1f	1n	1n, 1n, 1n
1990	6	1n , 1n, 2n*	.	3n	1f		3n,
1989	7	1n, 1n, 1m	2f		2n, 3m	1m/1n
1988	2	2n,			4s/2m
1987	9				2f, 4np, 1m, 1f, 1fp, 3n	1n	1n, 1n
1986	0
1985	11	1fp,2n, 1m, 2n, 1n, 2n	3f/4fg/16sg/62mg,		1n, 3f		2n, 1n
1984	7	1n, 1n, 5n, 1m/1n,	6f,			2s/1m,	2n
1983	8	3m, 2n			1f, 6n, 2m/1n	2n, 2n	2n
	Total-88	Total - 25	Total - 6	Total - 2	Total - 27	Total - 11	Total - 17
		Fatalities-1 (none on ground)	Fatalities-17 (4 on ground)  16 serious injuries on the ground	Fatals-2 (none on ground)	Fatals - 4 (none on ground)	Fatals - 4  (none on ground)	None Fatal

n = no fatalities or injuries
f = fatalities (pilot and/or passengers only)
s = serious injuries (pilot and/or passengers only)
m = minor injuries (pilot and/or passengers only)
fg = fatalities of people on the ground
sg = serious injuries of people on the ground
mg = minor injuries of people on the ground
* = on airport accident that could have occurred within 1 mile of the airport.
p = accident was wholly preventable and was due to the pilot's gross negligence.

NTSB sources for this study:

          NTSB-Search

          NTSB Aviation Accident/Incident Database
 
 
 

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