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NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD
Department of Transportation
Washington, D. C. 20591

NTSB 67-20
382-3736

Office of The Chairman
For Release: August 10, 1967
3:00 P.M.

The National Transportation Safety Board today issued a report on the number of accidents by all airmen certificate holders, and by pilot age groups, in U.S. general non-air carrier aviation.
The compilation included all student, private, commercial, and Air Transport Rating pilot certificate holders, and their ages, for the year 1965, the most recent calendar year providing complete data for the subject.
The Safety Board announced that the report, the first of its kind to be issued by the agency, will henceforth be issued annually and that it expected to have the complete 1966 data ready for release within the next 90 days. 
The Safety Board's 1965 figures excluding the student pilot group, reveal two significant findings:
1. Older pilots tend to be as safe, if not safer, than younger pilots on a proportionate basis.
2. Pilots under 30 tend to be slightly less safe than their elders, even though their scarcity in certain certificate groups affect the percentages.
The student pilot classification is unique in that 83% of the pilots are less than 40 years old and over one-half are not yet 30 years old. For the remaining 5 categories of pilots the bulk tend to be older, ranging generally between 30 and 49 years of age. The proportionate accident involvement record for the young student pilot under 30 is more favorable than for those who are older. A disproportionate number of accidents occur in all student pilots, it accounts for over 56% of the group's accidents.
The private pilot group has a broader distribution of members in the age groups and thus a flatter "curve." While unfavorable comparisons do appear in the middle age groups, they are not of great magnitudes. To a greater extent than in the other groups, the proportionate accident age relationship is more even in that the magnitude of the absolute differential between the pilot and accident involvement percentages is likely to be lower for any given age group in the private pilot group than it is for any other pilot-age group.
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