Aviation deaths rose worldwide last year even as number of crashes fell
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The wreckage from the crash of the Pakistani jet that killed 98 people in May, in the second deadliest airline incident last year. Worldwide, 299 people were killed in large commercial airplane crashes in the year.
PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
WASHINGTON • The number of people killed in large commercial airplane crashes rose last year to 299 worldwide, even as the number of crashes fell by more than 50 per cent, according to a Dutch consulting firm.
Aviation consulting firm To70 on Friday said there were 40 accidents last year involving large commercial passenger planes, five of which were fatal, resulting in 299 fatalities. In 2019, there were 86 accidents, eight of which were fatal, resulting in 257 fatalities.
Large commercial airplanes had 0.27 fatal accident per million flights last year, To70 said, or one fatal crash for every 3.7 million flights - up from 0.18 fatal accident per million flights in 2019.
The decline in crashes came amid a plunge in the number of flights because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Flightradar24 reported that the commercial flights it tracked worldwide last year fell 42 per cent to 24.4 million.
More than half of all deaths in the To70 review were the 176 people killed in January last year when a Ukrainian plane was shot down in Iranian airspace.
The second deadliest incident was the crash of a Pakistan airliner in May, which killed 98.
Large passenger airplanes covered by the statistics are used by nearly all travellers on airlines but exclude small commuter airplanes in service.
Over the past two decades, aviation deaths have been falling dramatically. As recently as 2005, there were 1,015 deaths aboard commercial passenger flights worldwide, the Aviation Safety Network (ASN) said.
Over the past five years, there have been an average of 14 fatal accidents for commercial passenger and cargo planes, resulting in 345 deaths annually, ASN said.
In 2017, aviation had its safest year on record worldwide, with only two fatal accidents involving regional turboprops that resulted in 13 deaths and no fatal crashes of passenger jets.
The United States has not had a fatal US passenger airline crash since February 2009. The country had only one fatality due to a US passenger airline accident in that period.
REUTERS
