U.S. Navy photo by K.R. Jackson-Smith
AVIATION MAINTENANCE MISHAPS
By CWO5 Brian Baker
A
DECADE IN REVIEW
s we closed out another decade at the end of 2020, we thought it was probably a good time to provide the fleet with a snapshot of what happened in our Naval Aviation maintenance community during the decade, provide some visual trends and statistics and offer sage advice for the way ahead.
Throughout the last fifty years of Naval aviation as a whole, incremental improvements have been made and the overall number of aviation mishaps have gone down. This past decade (2010 – 2020) however, we have seen a concerning trend with Aviation Ground Mishaps (AGMs) and more specifically aviation maintenance and ground operations mishap trends rising. Figure 1 shows the Navy and Marine Corps aviation mishap rates over the last decade. The majority of Class C mishap rates on both charts were derived from maintenance servicing and ground movement operations. Figure 1
MECH 7
