Sydney Sommers and research mentor Dr. Majumdar at the presentation of her thesis, “A Review and Analysis of Instructional Aviation Accidents.”

Author: Sydney Sommers | Major: Mechanical Engineering, German | Semester: Spring 2024

Sydney Sommers is an Honors student studying under the College of Engineering and Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences and majoring in Mechanical Engineering and German. In spring semester 2024, she worked with her mentor Dr. Neelakshi Majumdar from the Mechanical Engineering department to research student pilot accidents in general aviation. Sydney graduated with her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and her B.A. in German in May 2024 and is now pursuing opportunities in the medical device sector of the mechanical engineering field.

This year, I was a member of Dr. Majumdar’s Aerospace Systems Engineering and Transportation (ASYST) Lab. My project involved researching General Aviation (GA) student pilot accidents, analyzing historical accident reports, and modeling accidents to identify trends in accidents causes. Among other results, I found that the top causes of accidents included loss of control, improper use of flight controls, clipping of an object or terrain, and runway excursion; also, most student pilot accidents occurred in California and Florida with student pilots between 18 and 65 years of age, and Alaska and Maine were the states with the highest accidents per resident student pilot. From Dr. Majumdar’s state-based modeling method, I found that many accident narratives have limited details about the initial conditions of accidents and explicit failure to recover from loss of control incidences. In the future, it is possible that my findings could be used to help improve flight training or accident reporting methods.

I found my research mentor, Dr. Majumdar, before I chose my research topic. I read her published research on state-based modeling of GA accidents, and we discussed the prevalence of student pilot accidents in general aviation. I learned that GA accidents represent around 94% of all aviation accidents in the US, and almost 50% of those take place during flight training. I then wondered, why is this the case—are there common occurrences or patterns of events in student pilot accidents that made them more likely to occur? Is it possible that there could be a need for improved pilot training? Based on my interests, we decided that the best research path for me would be to join the ASYST Lab and research causes and demographics of GA student pilot accidents. I defined my window of research as between 2013 and 2022 due to the gap in research done on student pilot accidents post-2013, and I focused on demographic information—such as pilot age, pilot sex, and pilot resident state—and chronological analysis of accidents. In my research, I learned that general aviation consists of all civil aviation activities that are not commercial or military, and that the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigates all civil aviation accidents in the US. I learned about the investigative and reporting methods of the NTSB, and I learned how to model aviation accidents using Dr. Majumdar’s state-based approach, which chronologically analyzes accidents and helps identify accident causes from the NTSB historical aviation accident reports. The NTSB database was challenging to use, but I enjoyed learning how to use Microsoft Access; the state-based modeling of accidents also presented a challenge that I overcame with perseverance and attention to detail. Dr. Majumdar guided me through learning how to use the NTSB database, employing her modeling approach, conducting a literature review, and many other aspects of technical research that were new to me. As a member of the ASYST Lab, I was able to receive feedback from other students regarding my research and presentation. Through this research experience, I grew in my ability to present technical research to an audience, and successfully defended my thesis at the end of the semester. I hope to be able to apply this research experience to my career following my graduation in May 2024.