Accident Probe Calls for Increased Event Organizer Awareness of Licencing and Supervision Service Website

The Safety In­ves­ti­ga­tion Au­thor­ity of Fin­land (SIAF) has com­pleted an in­ves­ti­ga­tion into an avi­a­tion ac­ci­dent that oc­curred at Selän­pää aero­drome near Kou­vola on July 16, 2023. An aer­o­batic air­plane im­pacted ter­rain and was dam­aged be­yond re­pair. The pi­lot sus­tained fa­tal in­juries.

The accident happened during an annual public aviation day organized by the local flying association. The program included an aerobatic display. The first display item was a two-ship sequence that the pilots had practised beforehand. This was to be encored by two solo routines, the first of which was the accident flight. The event was terminated after the accident.

A probe into the background of the accident and sequence of events revealed two essential interrelated factors, which gave rise to safety recommendations from the SIAF. The findings concerned safety requirements for flying displays and human factors.

“Here in Finland, we have a good licensing and supervision service, which, however, is not well enough known to event organizers and authorities. The flying association had, as during the previous years, submitted an emergency plan to the local rescue authority, indicating that the program would include an aerobatic display – in other words, an established pattern was followed. But the rescue authority did not refer the association to another competent authority, and the association did not do this on its own initiative. In this case, the association should have requested a flying display permission from the Finnish Transport and Communication Agency Traficom. Had a permission been obtained, the association would, among other conditions, have been obliged to appoint a flying display director, whose prerogatives would have included a right to intervene with minimum height violations,” states the investigator-in-charge Janne Kotiranta.

“Moreover, the accident flight display was not preplanned. The pilot held a valid pilot license, a valid aeromedical certificate and a valid public display authorization, or PDA. However, his PDA skill level had been upgraded by two tiers one month prior to the accident. For all practical purposes, this upgrade allowed the lowering of the minimum aerobatic height from 700 feet to 400 feet – almost by fifty percent. The pilot simply initiated recovery from a flat spin at an excessively low altitude, which led to an impact in forested terrain,” explains Kotiranta.

The SIAF issues two safety recommendations. Their aims are to increase the awareness of event organizers and authorities of the licensing and supervision service, and to improve the existing public display authorization procedure.

Photo: SIAF