general aviation

General aviation (GA) encompasses all aviation other than scheduled airline flights and military aviation. It includes everything from a privately-owned light single-engine aircraft to business jets, news gathering, police, pipeline patrol, emergency medical flights, crop-dusting, rotocraft, sport ballooning and many other aerial activities.

Much of the traffic in general aviation is flown under Visual Flight Rules (VFR) in contrast to airline traffic which is nearly always flown by reference to Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) wherever ground facilities adequately support that type of navigation. The ground facilities needed for most general aviation flights are generally less sophisticated than those required by the armed forces or airlines operating scheduled flights, but there are many differences between the smaller grass aerodromes and those capable of accepting the larger corporate aircraft on international flights. Some of these differences simply reflect the different speeds and capabilities of aircraft types in common use, whilst others reflect regulations imposed to safeguard the safety of pilots, passengers and nearby communities. All public-use airports, including airports which are served by commercial carriers, have some general aviation traffic, although GA users in the United States are sometimes subject to user fees at the larger airports. The following statistics are from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Factbook of 2001:

colspan="2" \| Numbers of aircraft by type
Piston	align="right" \| 170,500
Turboprop	align="right" \| 5,800
Jet	align="right" \| 7,000
Total	align="right" \| 183,300

colspan="2" \| Numbers of aircraft by type of flying
Corporate	align="right" \| 11,000
Business	align="right" \| 25,200
Personal	align="right" \| 148,200
Instructional	align="right" \| 14,900
Flight	align="right" \| 4,300
Aerial observation	align="right" \| 5,100
External load	align="right" \| 200
Other work	align="right" \| 1,800
Siteseeing	align="right" \| 900
Air tour	align="right" \| 300
Air taxi	align="right" \| 3,700
Air medical	align="right" \| 900
Other	align="right" \| 1,000
Total	align="right" \| 217,500

colspan="2" \| Numbers of pilots by certificate type
Private	align="right" \| 243,823
Commercial	align="right" \| 12,502
ATP	align="right" \| 144,702
Total	align="right" \| 401,027

Estimated total hours flown under General Aviation rules CFR.91: 29,000,000

colspan="2" \| Numbers of accidents in 2001 by type of operation
Air Taxi	align="right" \| 72
Other General Aviation	align="right" \| 1721
Total	align="right" \| 1793

Further information can be found in the "Aviation Safety Foundation Nall Report" which is released each year by the Aviation Safety Foundation (ASF) based on data from National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reports.

General Aviation

See also