Relating aviation service difficulty reports to accident data for safety trend prediction

A synthetic model of scheduled-commercial U.S. aviation fatalities was constructed from linear combinations of the time-spectra of critical systems reporting using 5.5 years of Service Difficulty Reports (SDR){sup 2} and Accident Incident Data System (AIDS) records{sup 3}. This model, used to predict near-future trends in aviation accidents, was tested by using the first 36 months of data to construct the synthetic model which was used to predict fatalities during the following eight months. These predictions were tested by comparison with the fatality data. A reliability block diagram (RBD) and third-order extrapolations also were used as predictive models and compared with actuality. The synthetic model was the best predictor because of its use of systems data. Other results of the study are a database of service difficulties for major aviation systems, and a rank ordering of systems according to their contribution to the synthesis. 4 refs., 8 figs., 3 tabs.