Flying is the pillar of most travel, certainly in the international sense. And in its first full year of what could be considered “normality” post-pandemic, air travel also experienced its safest year on record, according to new data released by the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
While the spotlight well and truly shone on aviation safety at the start of 2024 – when the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered the suspension of MAX 9s after an Alaska Airlines jet blowout and when two planes collided at Tokyo Haneda Airport – IATA’s Annual Safety Report revealed that air travel in 2023 showed “best-ever” results in several parameters.
Most importantly (and impressively), there were no hull losses or fatal accidents involving passenger jet aircraft in 2023.
Among turboprop flights, there was only one fatal accident, which sadly resulted in the loss of 72 lives.
The safety record for air travel in 2023 is even better when one considers there were 37 million aircraft movements last year, an increase of 17 per cent in flights (jet and turboprop) over the year before.
With one accident for every 1.26 million flights, the all-accident rate was 0.80 per million sectors in 2023, an improvement from 1.30 in 2022 and the five-year average of 1.19 (between 2019 and 2023), as well as the lowest rate in over a decade.
The “fatality risk” also improved to 0.03 in 2023 from 0.11 in 2022 and for the five-year average. This means, on average, a person would have to fly every single day for 103,239 years to experience a fatal accident.
No IATA member airlines and IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) registered carriers experienced a fatal accident in 2023.
IATA’s Director General Willie Walsh said last year’s air travel record demonstrated “that flying is the safest mode of transport”.
“Aviation places its highest priority on safety and that shows in the 2023 performance,” he remarked.
“Jet operations saw no hull losses or fatalities. 2023 also saw the lowest fatality risk and ‘all accident’ rate on record.
“A single fatal turboprop accident with 72 fatalities, however, reminds us that we can never take safety for granted. And two high-profile accidents in the first month of 2024 show that, even if flying is among the safest activities a person can do, there is always room to improve.
“This is what we have done throughout our history. And we will continue to make flying ever safer.”
Earlier this year, Australasian airlines dominated a list of the world’s safest carriers for 2024, with Air New Zealand named safest airline.
