Airlines are safe, but this does not come cheap

Statistically, commercial passenger aviation is the safest mode of transport. You probably have heard or read this statement before. The data from the United States gives the number of fatalities per billion passenger miles in commercial passenger aviation as 0.038, which is about 240 times lower than the same measure for trips by personal car. Note, however, that general aviation (essentially, civilian non-commercial flights) is several times less safe than private car travel: the number of fatalities per billion passenger miles in general aviation is at least 1,000 times that for commercial passenger aviation.

Moreover, aviation safety has been improving over time. The number of commercial civil aviation fatalities per year currently stands at less than half of what we saw in the 1980s – a remarkable achievement considering the substantial growth in air travel over the same period. Moreover, all of the top ten years with the fewest numbers of commercial aviation fatalities per total passengers flown have occurred in the twenty-first century, and all of the top five in the previous decade. In terms of the total commercial civil aviation fatalities, eight of the top ten years with the fewest number of people killed in air crashes happened in this century as well – only 1984 and 1999 were the two years from the previous century that made it on to this list. The 1970s was the worst time for flying in this respect – six of the top-ten deadliest years in aviation history are from that decade.

Safety performance, however, is not evenly spread either around the world or across airlines. According to IATA, accident rates are much lower in Europe, North America, China and North Asia than in Africa, the Middle East, South America, and the Commonwealth of Independent States (which includes Russia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and the post-Soviet Central Asian states). Larger carriers are on average safer than smaller airlines. IATA also notes that its member airlines exhibit higher safety compared to those carriers that are not members. And, the higher accident rates in some of the regions can be explained by non-IATA member airlines; if we focused only on IATA members, we would see much more uniform accident rates across the world.