US air-safety regulators announced a national drive and novel grass-roots education campaign primarily targeting private pilots, with the goal of reducing general aviation accidents 10% by 2018.

Spanning everything from corporate jets to weekend pilots of small propeller planes, the plan reflects frustration among Federal Aviation Administration officials that the fatal accident rate in this segment has remained basically flat for almost a decade. Starting this weekend, the FAA intends to use more than 3,120 staffers and volunteers to reach out to private pilots at airshows and other events during April.

The effort also includes enhanced pilot-training and stepped-up efforts to systematically analyze accident and incident trends, and then develop proactive initiatives to reduce accidents.

On its Website, the FAA said the public outreach "will provide a springboard for identifying specific non-regulatory measures that can be used to improve flight training and reduce accidents."

The nationwide fatal accident rate for general aviation has been stuck above 1.1 crashes per 100,000 flight hours since 2001. That compares with a multi-year average of one major accident for roughly 2.5 million commercial flights in the US In some recent years, US airlines didn't have any fatal accidents.

Part of the latest safety drive is patterned after a comprehensive data-collection and analysis effort used by federal officials, airline safety experts and pilot union leaders to reduce US commercial-aviation accident rates by more than 80% starting in the late 1990s.

But unlike the coordinated safety program for airlines, commercial pilots, mechanics and air-traffic controllers, the general aviation effort won't mandate beefed-up training and testing. Instead, it will depend heavily on voluntary participation in education opportunities stressing the importance of pilot attitude, preflight aircraft checks and improving skills in low-speed maneuvers.