How safe is business aviation? Not as safe as the sector would like to think. We've been looking at the latest expert views of where the dangers are

Business aviation is guilty of underestimating just how vulnerable it is when it comes to safety, according to recent analysis. This is despite the fact that accident rates in the USA and Europe are generally falling.

More than three fifths of the world's fleet of business aircraft is in the USA, so analysis of what happens there remains a critical global safety benchmark. There is evidence the world fleet distribution may be changing slowly, the most obvious indicator being that "rest-of-world" orders for new business jets in 2006 exceeded – for the first time - the number placed by US operators.

A recent analysis of business-jet safety incidents in UK airspace has indicated that the overall sector, contrary to accepted industry opinion, does not have an underlying safety performance rivaling that of airlines, even if the upper, corporate, tier of business aviation does. This study, however, refers to incidents as indicators of risk, rather than accidents as proof of it.

Speaking at the European Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition in May, Richard Schofield, safety division chief at UK air navigation service provider NATS, said 3.5% of die movements in the airspace it manages are business jets, but 16% of level-bust incidents, 33% of failures to follow standard instrument departures and 12% of altimeter-setting errors involve business jets. In addition, he said that 10% of the particularly dangerous error in which a pilot correctly acknowledges a level-change instruction, but fails to carry it out, involves business-jet operations.