Is flying still the safest way to travel?

In its annual report, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) gives an update on flight safety in 2022. 

Aircraft crashes are often impressive. Both in terms of the victims and the damage caused. But they are still the exception. This is once again the finding of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) in its latest report on flight safety. In 2022, the airline industry was marked by 39 accidents, five of which were fatal. While the number of crashes is higher than in 2021 (there were 29), another reality must be taken into account: the significant increase in air traffic in 2022. Last year, just over 32 million flights were operated, compared to 25% fewer a year earlier. 

Of course, the accident rate has increased slightly: from 1.13 per million trips in 2021 to 1.21 in 2022, IATA reveals. In other words, there was one accident for every 826,088 flights made. But the number of fatal accidents has decreased: 5 in 2022, compared to 7 a year earlier. However, this represented more fatalities: 121 compared to 158. The majority of these fatalities were linked to a crash in March 2022 in China, which killed 132 people, including nine crew members. A Boeing 737-800 belonging to China Eastern crashed into a mountainside, after an unexplained fall of several thousand meters in just a few minutes. A tragedy that appears, for the moment, to be a voluntary act. In November 2022, another crash killed 19 people in Tanzania. 

Accident rate down over nine years

What about the other three fatal accidents? These did not result in casualties on board the aircraft, but outside of it. In two cases, there was a collision between people on the ground as the aircraft took off or landed. In the last, an airline ground worker was sucked into an aircraft engine in the United States. Despite these serious accidents, IATA draws positive conclusions in its report. "The industry has improved its overall safety performance over the past decade," the organization notes. The accident rate has indeed drastically decreased in ten years: from 2.31 accidents per million trips in 2013, to 1.21 nine years later.

That's still 231 fatalities. "Over the past five years, there has been an average of about seven fatal accidents per year for commercial aircraft (passengers and cargo)," the report details. Africa has the highest accident rate, with 8.70 accidents per million in 2022. It is followed by Latin America and the Caribbean, with 4.07 accidents per million trips. The most common causes? Adverse weather conditions, aircraft malfunction or non-compliance with standard operating procedures.

Source: https://www.lefigaro.fr/voyages/en-2022-il-y-a-eu-plus-d-accidents-d-avions-mais-moins-d-accidents-mortels-20230309