Although major news events kept safety issues involving commercial aviation in the public eye for much of the year, the worldwide, Western-built, commercial jet major accident rate declined in 2014 to a record low of 0.13 accidents per million departures. The previous record low of 0.14 per million departures was reported for 2012, and the last four years have seen the four lowest accident rates ever for commercial jets.
Worldwide, commercial jet transports were involved in four major accidents in 2014, also a historic low (Table 1). The term major accident was introduced by Flight Safety Foundation in 2006 and means that any of the following conditions are met: the aircraft is destroyed1; there are multiple fatalities to aircraft occupants; or there is one fatality to an aircraft occupant and the aircraft is substantially damaged.
For only the second year since such data have been recorded, there were no controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) accidents in 2014 inv…
