US Navy med mange ulykker i fjor

Navy safety boss grapples with '14 spike in aviation mishaps

NAVAL STATION NORFOLK, Va. - Fresh off its safest year on record, the Navy saw its manned aviation Class A mishaps - the most serious type of mishap - more than triple

Manned aviation experienced only four Class A mishaps in fiscal 2013, a rate of 0.48 mishaps per 100,000 flight hours. But there were 14 Class A mishaps - those involving a fatality, permanent total disability or upwards of $2 million in damage - in fiscal 2014, according to official summaries.

The head of the Naval Safety Center isn't sounding the alarm yet, noting that "one year, a trend does not make."

Rear Adm. Christopher Murray, a career fighter pilot, is launching a threefold strategy aimed at changing aviation culture to rid the Navy of the "cancer" of the Class A mishap, he said. His plan is to train and implement safety petty officers or officers in each command, conduct root cause analysis to eliminate emerging trends, and launch a marketing campaign that more directly speaks to those at risk.

"A lot of people will tell you that safety is just about writing good procedures and having people adhere to them," Murray said in a Dec. 12 interview. "In a perfect world, they are exactly correct. But the operational Navy is not a perfect world."