HC Deb 09 July 1962 vol 662 cc958-9
20. Mr. Rankin

asked the Minister of Aviation what research is being conducted into the relative safety of jet and piston-engined aircraft.

Mr. Woodhouse

Studies of aircraft accident statistics are made over a wide area, and include comparisons between types of aircraft where these suggest lines of research which may increase safety. The causes of accidents to individual aircraft are also minutely investigated, but such studies not do suggest any valid basis for generalisations about the relative safety of jet and piston-engined aircraft.

Mr. Rankin

Is it not time to try to evaluate these relative safeties, in view of the fact that so far in 1962 half of the fatalities have been incurred by jet aircraft? Does not that give the Minister some food for thinking about inquiring into the relative safety of the two types of aircraft?

Mr. Woodhouse

It does, of course, give us great cause for anxiety, and it is a problem that we have under review continuously, but the fact is that these large jet aircraft have been in service for only a short time, whereas the pistonengined aircraft, even the largest of them, have been in service for a very long time. That makes it extremely difficult to make valid comparisons between them. The accidents that have occurred in 1962 have been most disquieting, but, as an example of the impossibility of basing generalisations on them, I would point out that one of the most disastrous of them all is now generally thought to have been due to sabotage, which is not something that is confined to one particular type of aircraft.

Mr. Rankin

But did not the Minister suggest on Thursday that we might prevent accidents by applying the I.C.A.O. standards to the older aircraft? Does he remember that when I put that very point on 14th May his right hon. Friend took the opposite view and pointed out that the older types of aircraft were safer than many of the new types? Why, then, apply the modern standards to the safer aircraft?

Mr. Woodhouse

It is quite true that some of the older aircraft, such as the Dakota, to which we were then referring, have an extremely good air safety record. The point I made in my speech, to which the hon. Gentleman now draws attention, was that those aircraft came into service before the present standards were laid down and that it was, therefore, impossible absolutely and exactly to apply the modern standards to them. What we are now seeking to do is progressively to apply some of the modern standards to the alder aircraft where they are relevant to the type of construction, which now goes back some thirty years.