This report documents a six-month study to develop a framework
of societal costs of aircraft accidents in Australia for the
purpose of assisting the Department of Aviation in relating costs
and benefits in resource management decisions and for assisting the
Bureau of Air Safety Investigation in the management of aviation
safety promotion programs.
A detailed set of unit and total cost estimates for Australian
1980 is presented together with a literature review and recent work
on approaches to valuing human life.
Two cost components, fatalities and aircraft hull damage/loss,
account for about 96.5% of total annual costs of $31 million.
The costs of fatalities and injuries are based on the value of
future lost work efforts and are to be considered as minimum values
only. Intangible social costs such as pain and suffering are not
expressed in dollar terms.
Also the use of average cost levels is limited because of the
skewed distribution of most accident cost characteristics.
Further research directed towards refinement of the data and the
conceptual and empirical bases of these estimates is
recommended.