• Alaska had the fourth most general aviation accidents in the United States as of 2005, trailing only California, Florida and Texas, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
• Commuter and air taxi crashes in Alaska accounted for 35 percent of all commuter and air taxi crashes in the U.S. and about one in five deaths, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
• An average of eight professional pilots were killed per year in Alaska between 1990 and 2008, according to NIOSH. The fatality rate for Alaska pilots over that time was twice the rate as that for Alaska commercial fishermen.
• Pilot survival rates are improving. Between 2003 and 2008, the fatality rate dropped to 148 deaths per 100,000 pilots, which is less than twice the rate for all U.S. pilots during that time. It remained 41 times the mortality rate for all U.S. workers.
• The number of people killed in aircraft crashes in the state dropped from an average of 80 a year in the 1970s to about 23 deaths a year over the past decade, NTSB records show.
-- Kyle Hopkins, Anchorage Daily News
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