20 fatal crashes, 280 deaths. But 2019 still among safest years for commercial flights in 74 years
Data available with the Aviation Safety Network, an independent organisation that records and maintains data on air accidents the world over, show that 2019 was the third safest year (between 1946 and 2019) in terms of number of deaths caused by air accidents.When it comes to the number of fatal air accidents, 2019 was the seventh safest year in the past 74 years since the Second World War.It's true that tragedies like Ethiopian Airlines (2019), Lion Air (2018), Metrojet (2015) and others that claimed hundreds of lives are taking place almost every year, but data suggest that fatal air accidents have become remarkably rare in recent years as compared to the 1970's and 80's.
By Mukesh Rawat: The year 2019, like any other year, was a year of air accidents around the world. The worst of them took place on March 10 when a Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft of the Ethiopian Airlines lost control soon after take-off and crashed near Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa. The tragedy claimed 157 lives. Such was the impact of the crash that the plane's engines got buried 10m inside the earth, creating a crater measuring 28m in width and 40m in length.

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A day earlier, a Douglas DC-3 aircraft operated by LASER crashed while attempting an emergency landing in Colombia, killing 14 people. And, the last major fatal air accident of 2019 took place on December 27 when 12 people onboard a Bek Air flight were killed in a crash in Kazakhstan.

In all, 283 people died in 20 fatal air accidents involving civilian passenger and cargo flights in 2019.

But despite these tragedies, 2019 was one of the safest years in civil aviation history.

Data available with the Aviation Safety Network, an independent organisation that records and maintains data on air accidents the world over, show that 2019 was the third safest year (between 1946 and 2019) in terms of number of deaths caused by air accidents. When it comes to the number of fatal air accidents, 2019 was the seventh safest year in the past 74 years since the Second World War.

The safest year in terms of deaths was 2017, which witnessed 44 deaths in 10 fatal air accidents the world over. The significance of 2017 for air safety can be better understood from the fact that the next safest year2013witnessed 256 deaths (in 23 accidents), as compared to just 44 in 2017.

Overall, 1972 was the worst year for civil aviation with 2,472 lives lost in 65 fatal accidents. However, it was in 1948 that the world saw the most number of fatal air accidents (80) in a calendar year.

Commenting upon the trend in air accidents in recent years, Aviation Safety Network's CEO Harro Ranter said air safety level has increased significantly. "If the accident rate had remained the same as 10 years ago, there would have been 34 fatal accidents last year. At the accident rate of the year 2000, there would have been even 65 fatal accidents. This shows the enormous progress in terms of safety in the past two decades."

Courtesy: Aviation Safety Network

But can there be a single figure to rank years after factoring in both aspectstotal fatalities and fatal accidentsin order to identify the safest and most dangerous years for civil aviation?

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Yes, there can be.

For this analysis, we have devised the term 'average fatalities per accident' which is calculated by dividing the number of fatalities in a calendar year by the number of fatal accidents in that year.

Using this calculation, we find that 2017 was still the safest year with an average of four deaths per fatal accident. It was followed by 2013 (11 deaths) and 1955 (12 deaths).

The worst years under this parameter was 1985, when on an average 62 people were killed in every fatal accident. The second and third worst years were 2015 and 2014, registering an average of 54 and 53 deaths per accidents respectively.

Despite the limitations that come with averages, rankings based on this calculation do provide an idea of the trend in fatal accidents vis-a-vis fatalities.

ARE WE FLYING IN SAFER TIMES?

Though air accidents are recurring, decadal analysis of Aviation Safety Network's data shows fatal air accidents have declined in recent times.

For example, between 2000 and 2009, there were 299 fatal air accidents the world over. But over the next decade (2010-2019), this number fell to 188. Besides this, 8,526 people lost their lives in air accidents between 2000 and 2009, but over the next decade (2010-2019), the number of deaths almost halved to 4,699.

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This is despite the fact that the volume of air traffic has increased manifold over this period, thus indicating that air travel is becoming much safer than any other time in the past.

However, though the last decade saw fewer fatal accidents and deaths, the past five years were witness to accidents with significantly high casualties.

advertisement In 2019, a Boeing 737 of the Ethiopian Airlines met with an accident, killing 157 people.

In 2018, there were two major air accidents: A Boeing 737 of Lion Air crashed, killing 189 people in Indonesia; and a Boeing 737 of Cubana de Aviaci³n crashed, killing 112 in Cuba. This was a tragic year for air travel in general. The most catastrophic accident involved a military plane and killed 257 people. (Military planes have otherwise been excluded in the overall analysis presented in this article.)

2017 was a relatively calmer year with the deadliest air accident claiming 12 lives in Costa Rica.

2015 saw one of the deadliest air tragedies in recent years when 224 people were killed after an Airbus operated by Metrojet crashed in Egypt. In the same year, another Airbus operated by Germanwings crashed in France killing 150 people.

Thus, while the overall yearly figure of fatalities has reduced considerably, catastrophic air disasters claiming hundreds of lives continue.

ARE SOME SKIES RISKIER THAN OTHERS?

The data on air accidents show that though fatal air accidents and deaths have occurred across the world, there are regions which are more prone to such tragedies than others.

In the past 74 years, among all continents Europe has suffered the highest number of fatal accidents involving commercial passenger and cargo planes. It is also the continent with highest deaths in air accidents1,164 accidents and 23,762 deaths.

Europe is followed by North America where 13,190 people were killed in 1,063 fatal accidents in this period.

If we see the country-wise breakup of Aviation Safety Network's data, we find the United States has suffered the most number of accidents (854) and deaths (10,810), followed by Russia (525 accidents and 8,453 deaths).

However, it is not surprising that the US and Russia have suffered the most because these are also countries where the volume of air traffic has been relatively denser than other parts of the world. Hence, these numbers don't necessarily mean air operations in these countries are shoddy.

But the list of top 25 countries in terms of fatal air accidents and resultant deaths also includes countries like Brazil (fourth spot), Colombia (fifth spot), Indonesia (eighth spot), and Mexico (ninth spot). These are countries that aren't known to have heavy air traffic. High number of fatal accidents and deaths in these countries thus does indicate poor air safety standards there.

This argument gets strengthened if we analyse fatal air accidents that took place in the past five years.

Between 2015 and 2019, there were 69 fatal accidents claiming 1,682 lives. Of these, 50 per cent deaths occurred in countries such as Indonesia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Cuba and Colombia.

The US saw the highest number of fatal accidents (15) but the number of people killed was 39. Now, compare this with Indonesia where 262 people were killed in six accidents; Egypt where 224 died in a single crash; and Russia where five fatal accidents claimed 182 lives.

Data for the past five years show that barring the 2015 Germanwings Airbus crash in France, the trend appears to be that developing and under-developed countries suffer high fatalities even though the number of fatal accidents is low there.

BUT, ARE THING ALL GLOOMY?

It's true that tragedies like Ethiopian Airlines (2019), Lion Air (2018), Metrojet (2015) and others that claimed hundreds of lives are taking place almost every year, but data suggest that fatal air accidents have become remarkably rare in recent years as compared to the 1970's and 80's.

A measure of this is the rate of fatal accidents per million flights.

In 1970, it was estimated that there were approximately 94.48 lakh departures world over and the rate of fatal accidents per million flights was 6.35 i.e. more than six fatal accidents per million flights.

In 2019, the estimated global departures stood at 3.90 crore and the rate of fatal accidents per million flights fell to 0.51. This rate was the lowest (0.28) in 2017, which was the safest year for commercial passenger and cargo flights.

In other words, what this data reveals is that even though the number of departures has increased by 313 per cent between 1970 and 2019, fatal air accidents are becoming increasingly rarer.

(NOTE: This analysis doesn't include accidents involving military aircraft and those civil aircraft crashes that had a seating capacity of less than 14.)

This article has been updated with an infographics of Aviation Safety Network.

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