Sector safety performance: parachuting

Between 2014 and 2023, the ATSB received reports of 207 occurrences in this sector from Australia VH registered aircraft in Australia.

There were 14 accidents with 3 of these being fatal.

The breakdown of occurrences across parachuting flights (2014 to 2023).
OccurrenceNumberFatalitiesSerious injuries
Accidents1485
Serious incidents1500
Incidents17800
Total20785

Source: BITRE, ATSB occurrence database

Note: The BITRE data is available only until 2022, so we estimate the 2023 flight hours for the rates calculation.

Accidents per million flying hours

We analysed parachuting operations separately. Figure 5 shows the rate of accidents, serious incidents, and incidents per million flying hours from 2014 to 2023 in this sector. Across all 3 occurrence types a decreasing trend is clear except the incident rates.

Figure 5
YearSerious incident rateAccident rateIncident rate
2014107.5268817161.29032261075
2015180.9954751180.99547511041
201644.247787610929
201786.9565217401000
201848.309178740531
201958.4795321658.479532161637
20200210.52631581263
2021097.08737864485
2022215.827338171.94244604863
202358.47953216116.95906431345
ATSB occurrences rate per 1 million movements for parachute dropping flights (2014 to 2023).
OccurrenceRate per million
Fatal accident rate17.2 (or 1 fatal accident every 3.3 years on average)
Accident rate80.0 (or 1 accident every 9 months on average)
Serious incident rate85.8
Incident rate1018
Total hours174,900 (10 years, estimate 2023)

Source: BITRE, ATSB occurrence database

Published date: 21 August 2024
Online version available at: https://www.casa.gov.au//operations-safety-and-travel/safety-management-systems/sector-safety-risk-profiles/parachuting-sector-safety-risk-profile/sector-safety-performance-parachuting
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