No jets crashed in passenger service, where more people flew to more places than ever
Despite the highest volume of passenger flew to more places than ever, 2017 was the safest year on record for airline passengers.
In year 2017, there were no passenger plane accidents as evidenced by figures from two separate consultant agencies, The Aviation Safety Network and Dutch-based aviation consultancy – To70.
The Aviation Safety Network reported there were no commercial passenger jet deaths in 2017, but 10 fatal airliner accidents resulting in 44 fatalities on board and 35 persons on the ground, including cargo planes and commercial passenger turboprop aircraft.
Whereas Dutch-based aviation consultancy, To70 estimated that the fatal accident rate for large commercial passenger flights is 0.06 per million flights or one fatal accident for every 16 million flights.
According to report the two crashes which occurred on New Year’s Eve a seaplane in Sydney which killed six, and a Cessna Caravan which crashed in Costa Rica, killing all 12 on board are not included in the tally since both aircraft weighed less than 5,700kg.
The last fatal passenger jet airliner accident was on November 28, 2016, when a plane carrying the Brazilian soccer team Chapecoense crashed in Colombia and left 71 dead. Major U.S. airlines haven’t had a fatal crash since 2001.
The first other accident took place in October when an Embraer Brasilia operating as an air ambulance in Angola was lost control after reportedly suffering an engine failure, seven people died, including the patient.
The deadliest incident last year occurred in January when a Turkish cargo jet smashed into a village in Kyrgyzstan as it tried to land at a nearby airport in dense fog, killing 35 on the ground and all four on board.
In 2016, 412 people were killed in the United States in aviation accidents nearly all in general aviation accidents and none on commercial passenger airlines was the most horrible accident.
In 2015, 471 people died in four crashes; they included a Metrojet flight from Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg, Russia, which killed 224, and a Germanwings Airbus A320 from Barcelona to Dusseldorf whose first officer, Andreas Lubitz, killed 150 on board by deliberately crashing into the French Alps.
In 2014, 864 people died in five crashes, including the losses of two Malaysia Airlines 777s: MH370, whose fate is still unknown, and MH17, downed by a missile over eastern Ukraine.