Overview of Incidents, Accidents & Fatalities

This summary overview has been compiled by the SAHPA Safety Manager, and is based on Incidents, Accidents and Fatalities reported to the SAHPA Office during the period January 2019 to February 2021.

• 101 Incidents, Accidents and Fatalities were reported:
  • Incidents (64)
  • Accidents (29)
  • Fatalities (8)

However, many additional incidents and accidents were not formally reported, despite repeated attempts by the SAHPA Office to get further information. Hearsay, gossip, rumours and anecdotes are unreliable sources of information and are therefore excluded from this overview.

Flight Types

• PG Solo flights (54)
• TFI (26)
• Training flights (18)
• PPG (12)
• Hang-gliding (7)
• Foreigners (8)
• Tandem (2)

Location

Incidents, Accidents and Fatalities were spread across the following provinces:

• Western Cape (54)
• Southern Cape (25)
• Gauteng (10)
• Mpumalanga (3)
• Eastern Cape (2)
• Kwazulu/Natal (2)
• Other (5)

Observations

• TFI events occur predominantly at Signal Hill, Lion’s Head and Sedgefield.
• Foreigners account for 5 out of 8 fatalities
• Leading contributing causes of accidents, as submitted by pilots:
  • Thermal disturbance
  • Strong wind
  • Overconfidence
  • Inexperience

Data

While there may be learnings from each individual event, the meaningful insight comes from examining the aggregate data to identify trends, and to propose systemic improvements.

Note: some members have pointed out errors in the data. This is due to the quality of data being submitted by members. While there may be occasional errors with dates, the incident statistics are correct.

Should you want to Slice & Dice the data yourself, you may download the data in CSV format. A concise version of the data is presented in this table:

Process

The process to report an Incident, Accident or Fatality remains the same:

• Submit an Incident/Accident Report
• In some cases, the Safety Manager may contact you (or witnesses) for further information.

The SAHPA Team