IATA Happy With Fewer Plane Accidents

Last year, more than 3.5 billion people flew safely on 37.6 million flights worldwide, of which 31.4 million flew by jet and 6.2 million by turboprop.

The airline industry registered a total of 136 fatalities in 2015, versus 641 fatalities in 2014. The five-year average came up to 504 killed. Including those who lost their lives in Germanwings 9525 and Metrojet 9268, last year averaged 510 fatalities.

Overall, the airline industry registered one major accident for every 3.1 million flights worldwide in 2015 – a hull loss of 0.32 per cent per million flights – not as good as the 2014 rate of 0.27 but a 30% improvement compared to the previous five-year (2010-2014) rate of 0.46 hull loss accidents per million jet flights.

This was the data which the International Air Transport Association (IATA) released yesterday on the safety performance of the commercial airline industry last year.

“In terms of the number of fatal accidents, 2015 was an extraordinarily safe year,” remarked, IATA’s Director General and CEO Tony Tyler.

Last year, four accidents resulted in passenger fatalities, all of which involved turboprop aircraft, with 136 killed. This compares with an average of 17.6 fatal accidents and 504 fatalities per year in the previous five-year period (2010-2014).

The 2015 jet hull loss rate for members of IATA was 0.22, or one accident for every 4.5 million flights, which outperformed the global rate by 31% and which was in line with the five-year rate (2010-2014) of 0.21 per million flights but above the 0.12 hull loss rate achieved in 2014.

The loss of Germanwings 9525 due to pilot suicide and Metrojet 9268 due to suspected terrorism resulted in the deaths of 374 passengers and crew. However, they were not included in the accident statistics as they are classified as deliberate acts of unlawful interference.

Accidents are gathered using multiple sources and validated and classified by the Accident Classification Task Force (ACTF). The task force is comprised of industry safety experts and managed by IATA.

All regions, except North America, saw their safety performance improve in 2015 compared to the respective five-year rate 2010-2014. Africa registered 3.49 jet hull loss compared to a five-year rate of 3.69.

Asia Pacific recorded a 0.21 jet hull loss from 0.56 in the comparative period, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) composed of ten former Soviet Republics–Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan, registered 1.88 compared to 3.14 before; Europe, 0.15 versus 0.18; Latin America and the Caribbean, 0.39 compared to 0.92; Middle East-North Africa, zero versus 1.00; North America, 0.32 compared to 0.13 and North Asia, 0.00 compared to a 0.06