Accident numbers and rates varied widely around the world in 2020, with commercial air transport operators based in North Asia going accident-free while North American operators were involved in more accidents than any other region and African operators recorded the highest accident rate, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) says.
IATA’s 2020 Safety Report, issued in late March, noted that all regions were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the travel restrictions that accompanied it. Overall, flight operations fell 53 percent from 2019 levels, and the total number of accidents and fatal accidents also declined, the report said.
Regional accident rates, however, did not necessarily follow the downward trend.
Commercial airliners based in Africa recorded a higher accident rate than those based in any other region of the world in 2020 with 9.86 accidents per million flights, nearly double the rate for the five-year period from 2016 thro…
