The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has published its latest Annual Safety Report for global aviation.
Overall, the IATA report, released on February 29, 2024, reflected an incredible year for safety around the world with several areas seeing their “best ever” results.
This is against the backdrop of 37 million aircraft movements in 2023 for both passenger jet and turboprop aircraft and represents an increase of 17% when compared against 2022.
While there were no passenger jet fatal accidents or hull losses in 2023, a Yeti Airlines ATR 72 turboprop crash did sadly result in the loss of 72 people on January 15, 2023.
Key safety findings
The all accident rate was 0.80 per million sectors in 2023 (one accident for every 1.26 million flights), an improvement from 1.30 in 2022 and the lowest rate in over a decade.
The fatality risk improved to 0.03 in 2023 from 0.11 in 2022 – at this level of safety, the average person would have to fly every day for 103,239 years before they had a fatal accident.
“2023 safety performance continues to demonstrate that flying is the safest mode of transport. Aviation places its highest priority on safety and that shows in the 2023 performance. Jet operations saw no hull losses or fatalities. 2023 also saw the lowest fatality risk and ‘all accident’ rate on record,” Willie Walsh, IATA’s Director General, said.
However, Walsh said that the Yeti Airlines tragedy reminds everyone in aviation that they can never take “safety for granted”.
Walsh also commented on both the Alaska Airlines plug door incident on January 5, 2024, and the Japan Airlines crash on January 2, 2024, where a landing A350 struck a Coast Guard plane in Tokyo.
Extraordinary daylight images of the burnt wreckage of the Japan Airlines A350 — which was flaming for around three hours.
— Alex Macheras (@AlexInAir) January 3, 2024
Crucially, in the immediate aftermath of the collision, the fire seemed to be contained in the left wing area due to firewalls made of materials which… pic.twitter.com/M88VPCENWj
“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,” Walsh added.
Additional insights
The 2023 all accident rate improved in all regions in 2023 compared to 2022, with the exception of North America and Asia-Pacific. While all regions except Asia-Pacific recorded a fatality risk of zero in 2023.
In both North America and Europe, the largest proportion of accidents in 2023 were related to landing gear collapses.
In Africa, the all accident rate improved from 10.88 per million sectors in 2022 to 6.38 in 2023.
In the Middle East and North Africa, the all accident rate improved from 1.30 accidents per million sectors in 2022 to 1.16 in 2023
Europe has had a fatality risk of zero since 2018.