Research note

The book is priced on a fleet that no longer exists

Fatal accident rates for the three largest single-pilot turbine families fell by half to four fifths in a decade. Pricing built on the older experience is pricing a different fleet.

Split the record at 2017 and compare the owner-flown turbine families on the same exposure base: fatal accidents per 1,000 aircraft-years, counted on every year each aircraft spent on the US register.

Family2008 to 20162017 to 2025
TBM series3.161.38
Pilatus PC-122.270.58
Citation CJ (525 series)1.660.26

Fatal accidents per 1,000 aircraft-years. US-registered aircraft, business use. Counts are small; see the caution below.

What changed

The single-pilot turbine fleet did not improve at the margin. It improved by half to four fifths. The change coincides with type-specific training requirements, envelope protection and autothrottles becoming common in these fleets. Whatever did the work, the fleet the record describes after 2017 is not the fleet it described before.

What it means for a book

The implication runs both ways. A book priced on decade-old single-pilot experience overprices the current fleets in these families, and whoever sees that first can write the best of them at rates the rest of the market calls thin. At the same time, the shift is not uniform: a small number of older legacy types moved the other way. The exposure worth watching is less the new single-pilot jet than the older airframe passing into owner operation.

Family counts are small, so read these rates for direction and the size of the change.

Where the rest lives

This is the one family-level comparison we publish in the open. Rates for the other families, and cuts by operation type, aircraft age and period, are in the ALEX™ Market Tables.

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