(This is the final article in a series about landmark developments in aviation safety since Flight Safety Foundation was founded in 1945.)
Despite a spate of accidents in commercial and business aviation in 2024 and 2025, air travel has become remarkably safe in the eight decades since Flight Safety Foundation was established in 1945.
World War II had introduced turbine engines, pressurized cabins, and radar, among other things, to military air forces. At the war’s end, those advances were incorporated into civil aviation — some of the earliest advances in technology and safety that contributed, within just a few years, to an impressive decline in accident numbers and laid the groundwork for the development of the industry’s impressive safety record.
In the early post-war years, accidents — including those with multiple fatalities — were frequent, and the accident-prevention efforts mounted by Flight Safety Foundation and others were cea…
