Ground damage is one of aviation’s most persistent risk areas, and one of its most underreported. It happens on ramps, in hangars, during tows, and on taxiways, often without fanfare and sometimes without anyone knowing exactly when or how. ACSF’s Ground Operations Working Group has spent the past several months building a clearer picture of this problem, and the findings are worth sharing.
Working across multiple data sources, the group compiled and reviewed ground damage events spanning November 2023 through April 2026, drawn from operator safety and ASAP reporting programs, ACSF member submissions, and maintenance facility data. Each record was reviewed individually and categorized by phase of operation, event type, and outcome. A few things stand
out.
Ground support equipment contact is the leading event type, accounting for 21% of all events. Tugs, scissor lifts, fuel trucks, GPU cables, and catering vehicles are the most common sources. The equipment itself isn’t the real story. The coordination gap between flight crews and ground handlers is. In most of these events, both the crew and the ground personnel were present and actively working. The contact happened anyway. Aircraft-to-aircraft contact, one aircraft physically touching another on the ground, accounts for nearly one in nine events. That figure is likely higher than most operators would expect.
Aircraft-to-structure contact follows a similar pattern. Wingtips meet hangar walls, fences, and blast barriers during towing and taxi operations, with a wing walker posted on one side and contact occurring on the other. Perhaps the most significant finding is what the data doesn’t show. Near misses account for only 14% of the events reviewed. In a healthy reporting culture, near-misses are expected to outnumber confirmed damage events, since they represent the broader population of risk that precedes actual damage. A rate this low suggests the full scope of ground damage risk isn’t yet being captured in reporting. Operators should encourage reporting of near miss ground events from their front line employees to further bolster their own data sets.
