The Airworthiness of Supersonic Aircraft

SummaryThe safety target for the Supersonic Transport has been set by the governments sponsoring the project. This is to achieve a safety level at least as good as that of subsonic aircraft at the same time. An analysis of present accident trends is used to give more precision to this statement. If the present rate of improvement in safety continues, the accident rate in the early 1970's can be expected to be some 20% to 25% below today's figures and the target for the SST must be for an improvement of at least 30%. To achieve improvements of this order in a safety record which is already good requires considerable effort by all concerned and necessitates a more scientific approach to safety requirements, especially airworthiness requirements. Some examples of the way this is being done in the United Kingdom and f ranee are given.