Despite year-over-year increases in accidents and fatal accidents in 2018, the commercial airline industry continued a long-term trend toward accident reduction, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) says.1
Sixty-two commercial airline accidents were recorded in 2018, including 11 fatal accidents that resulted in 523 on-board fatalities, according to the IATA data, released in February. Those numbers compare with 46 total accidents, six fatal accidents and a record-low 19 on-board fatalities in 2017 (Table 1). One 2017 accident also killed 35 people on the ground.
The total accident rate for the year was 1.35 accidents per 1 million flights — the equivalent of one accident every 740,000 flights, according to IATA data released in February (Figure 1). The number reflected a decline in safety from the 2017 record low rate of 1.11 accidents per million flights but an improvement over the all-accident rate of 1.79 per million flights for the five-year period…
