Commercial aviation accident statistics are critical in making a depiction of the trends determining strategies for managing global aviation safety. There is a broad range of issues that statisticians have to think about when taking part in the process of carrying out analysis, comparisons as well as interpretation of the data. This paper examines the issues that are critical in making a comparison and analysis of accident statistics to ensure that standardization occurs of statistical data especially when it comes to the process of handling this data.

Similar to all statistical data, it is critical to understand that not every single piece of data can be recorded and then compared to other data to come to a conclusion. It is, therefore, vital to make a careful selection of the type of data to be gathered and decide what the collected data will be compared to. Aside from this, recording of statistical data has to be done over a particular period, with federal regulations appearing to accept as the standard a span of between five and ten years. Another critical denominator to correctly examine accident statistics for safety analysis is exposure data. Exposure data refers to information which indicates the likelihood of an event occurring (Lofquist, 2010). This type of data finds use as a denominator rate in determining aircraft accidents as well as fatalities per every million departures. Statisticians make use of departures as the foundation of calculating rates since there is a deeper statistical connection between accidents and departures than there is between accidents and the number of flight hours or between the number of accidents that occur and the number of planes that are in service (Rodrigues & Cusick, 2012).

An example of this situation is if one Airline has experienced ten accidents per every two million departures, while another one has twenty accidents per every 4 million departures. By only making use of the number of accidents that have occurred for comparison, it would appear that the first airline has a bigger likelihood of getting into an accident. However, if calculations are made using accident rates, it seems both Airlines have a similar opportunity to face accidents (Lofquist, 2010).

It is also important to note that it is not possible to make a simple comparison of accidents based on generalizations. General accidents in aviation cannot be weighed against accidents that involve major airlines. This is because these big airlines often operate at a frequency that is much higher and have greater rates of departures and landings, which are the most significant conditions of flight. In this regard, making a comparison of these two types of operations would likely result in results that are not accurate and also because each of these operations requires their unique requirements (Rodrigues & Cusick, 2012). The Federal Aviation Authority has requirements that are quite strict as a result of the environment under which these flights are carried out. For instance, these regulations set out that larger aircraft should be able to carry a greater number of passengers and cargo. In this regard, smaller issues would not be a problem for private airplanes carrying one passenger but could prevent a bigger aircraft from taking off. This means that statistical comparisons would be inaccurate as a result of the distinct set of regulations (Lofquist, 2010).

One of the most critical issues to consider when one is making an analysis and comparison of commercial aviation statistics is to have an understanding that an adequate examination can only be done by comparing statistics that are similar. In this regard, an accident involving a major plane cannot be compared with an accident relating to a small airplane. Each of these airlines has its different set of conditions and therefore require their special requirements for statistical analysis.