GRIDINT Research · Safety

The fatal margin.

Since 2008 the NTSB has opened 30,968 aviation investigations, and this report reads every one of them. The headline is not the crashes — it is the margin: in — of investigated accidents, nobody was hurt at all — no injury of any class recorded. The fatal fraction is the exception, concentrated in place, in aircraft type, and in time — and every figure on this page is computed from the full record at render time.

published 2026-08-27 · data cutoff 2026-08-26 · edition 1 — updated only by a new dated edition · source: NTSB avall.mdb, 2008–present

THE YEARS

Eighteen years of investigations, classed.

Every investigation by the year it opened, stacked by the highest injury in the event — green means everyone walked away. The chips filter classes; the slider sets the first year. What emerges: the total falls across the era, and the green band holds its share the whole way down.

A1Investigations per year, stacked by highest injury class
WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING AT One column per year; segments are the worst outcome recorded in each event — green none, cyan minor, amber serious, coral fatal, gray unknown. Tap or hover any segment for its exact count and share of the year.
FROM YEAR 2008
sourceNTSB aviation accident database (avall.mdb) · weekly bulk · every event carries its NTSB id methodclass = highest injury recorded per event — the worst outcome, not a casualty count
THE MARGIN

The survived majority.

Aviation coverage runs on the fatal exception. The record runs the other way: most investigated accidents hurt no one, and the share holds steady across two decades. This is the margin between an accident and a tragedy — wide, engineered, and almost never reported.

B1Outcome composition, whole record — and the fatal fraction, year by year
WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING AT The band is all — events in one bar — the green IS the story. Beneath it, the fatal share per year as a line: the margin's trend, drawn without smoothing.
sourcesame record methodshare of events by highest injury; the fatal line is per-year fatal events ÷ all events, unsmoothed
B2The margin pyramid — walked-away left, fatal right, year by year
WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING AT A back-to-back pyramid: each row is a year; the green wing counts events where no one was hurt, the coral wing counts fatal events. The asymmetry IS the margin — and it holds in every single year of the record.
sourcesame record methodwings share one scale · the current year is partial and labeled
WHERE

Twenty states carry most of it.

Investigations concentrate where general aviation lives: the top state alone carries about a tenth of the record. Bars are stacked by outcome class — the fatal fraction barely moves between states, and where it does, the bar says so.

C1The twenty busiest states, stacked by outcome class
WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING AT One row per state, length = total investigations since 2008, segments by class. Tap or hover for counts and the state's fatal share against the national rate.
sourcesame record · state as recorded by the NTSB · events without a state say so
THE MAKES

General aviation is the record.

The fifteen most-investigated manufacturers. This is not a safety ranking — it is an exposure map: the small-aircraft fleets that fly the most hours under the loosest conditions dominate the record, and the method says exactly what this table cannot claim.

D1The fifteen most-investigated makes — events and fatal share
WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING AT Bars are total investigated events per manufacturer; the dot on each bar marks its fatal share against the national rate (the dashed line). More events does NOT mean less safe — it means more flying.
sourcesame record · make as recorded, normalized case only methodno per-flight-hour rate exists in this record — exposure, not risk; stated, not implied
THE LEDGER

The deadliest thirty, receipts attached.

The thirty highest-fatality events in the record, each carrying its NTSB identifier. The full —-event record is explorable, filterable, and downloadable on the aviation data hub — this table is deliberately the last view.

E1Highest-fatality events — edition 1
sourceNTSB · identifiers resolve in CAROL · the hub carries the full record + verification extract
METHOD

How this was made, and its limits.

The data: the NTSB's own database, pulled weekly by our warehouse from the official bulk file, distilled without editorial touch — every event keeps its NTSB identifier. Every figure on this page is computed from the full record in your browser at render time. The cards below are the limits, stated.

Investigations, not crashes
The NTSB investigates what meets its criteria — the record is authoritative for investigations, not a census of every incident in the sky.
Highest injury, not casualties
Class is the WORST outcome in the event. Fatalities are counted separately and only where recorded.
Exposure, not risk
No flight-hour denominator exists in this record. A make with more events flies more — nothing here ranks safety.
General aviation dominates
Most of the record is small aircraft. Commercial aviation’s near-zero fatal rate lives in a handful of these rows.
The current year is partial
The last column is a year still being filed — drawn as it stands, never extrapolated.
FINDINGS

Four things the record shows.

1The survived majority is the story. In — of — investigated accidents since 2008, the highest recorded injury was NONE. The margin between accident and tragedy is the widest, least-reported number in aviation. → the margin, B1
2The record is shrinking. Investigations fell from — in 2008 to — in the last complete year — while the fatal share stayed near —, unmoved by the decline. → the years, A1
3Geography is exposure. — leads the record with — events — not because its skies are dangerous, but because that is where America flies small aircraft. → where, C1
4The deadliest events are the record’s rarest. Events with ten or more deaths number just — in eighteen years — each one carrying its identifier in the ledger. → the ledger, E1
A GRIDINT RESEARCH REPORT · SAFETY · AUTHORED FROM OFFICIAL RECORDS · RENDERED BY THE GRIDINT BUILDER
published 2026-08-27 · data cutoff 2026-08-26 · edition 1 — updated only by a new dated edition

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