Quantifying the Risk of Accidents and Serious Incidents Due to Maintenance in General Aviation

In the United States, General Aviation (GA) moves a small volume of passengers, but it accounts for a disproportionate number of accidents and serious incidents. There is concern among GA pilots and owners that an airplane is more likely to fail in the first hours of service following maintenance, e.g., human errors during maintenance and early mortality of newly installed components. However, no prior work has investigated whether this concern is substantiated by data. Prior research has analyzed maintenance-related failures in airline transport aviation, but not in GA. This paper asks the question: does evidence show higher rates of aircraft-caused accidents and serious incidents in GA airplanes just returned to service after inspective maintenance? We analyze GA events reported to the NTSB between 2008 and 2024, comparing the post-maintenance reliability sampled on adverse events caused by aircraft alone, against those caused by human error alone. We find that the answer is yes: the risk is 33.8% higher than baseline in the first hour following an inspection, and it remains higher than baseline for at least the first 31 hours. Heightened pilot and operator caution in the early hours in service after an inspection are therefore justified.