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Published: 2008

Total Pages: 22

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Visual Flight Rules (VFR) into Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC) accidents are a major concern in the aviation industry. More than 70% of the fatal weather-related accidents involved General Aviation (GA) pilots operating under visual flight rules (VFR) that continued into IMC. The purpose of this study was to pair GA accident causal factors that had been classified with the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) categories and traditional demographic data in an effort to present a more complete picture of VFR flight into IMC accidents. To accomplish this, GA accidents associated with VFR flight into IMC were examined to determine if there were any causal factors that set these accidents apart from the rest of GA (RoGA) accidents. GA accident data (14 CFR Part 91) from 1990-2004 were analyzed. The dataset was divided into accidents that had VFR into IMC (VFR-IMC; N = 609) cited as a cause or factor versus the rest of the GA accidents (RoGA; N = 18, 528). Analyses were performed examining the human error associated with these accidents.