Global airline travel safest in 2011 since World War II
The global airline-accident rate is on pace this year to reach the lowest recorded, according to a trade group.
Through the end of November, this year's rate of accidents -- serious enough to destroy an airplane -- was 52 percent lower than the average for the previous five full years, according to statistics compiled by the International Air Transport Association.
This year's rate of 0.34 accidents per million flights is the lowest since World War II -- when the modern airline industry began -- said Perry Flint, the Washington-based association's spokesman. The rate is 68 percent less.
"This is a long-term trend -- 2011 is not some kind of anomaly," Flint said.
The number of deaths in airline accidents globally are at the lowest levels since 2006, the first year for which the association reported data in that category on its website. Through November, 486 people had died in air crashes, compared with the previous low of 502 in 2008.
The association represents airlines, including former Pittsburgh-based US Airways Group Inc., as well as Aer Lingus in Ireland and Air France.
One year of the accident decline, however, should be approached with caution.
Kevin Darcy, a director of RTI Forensics in San Francisco and former chief accident investigator for Boeing Co., said trends in aviation safety take many years to develop.
Still, technological improvements in the manufacture of aircraft and safety devices introduced during the past two decades almost have eliminated some types of accidents, he said.
The most common type of serious accident occurs when an airplane goes off a runway during takeoff or landing, according to a Dec. 7 presentation by Gunther Matschnigg, senior vice president for safety, operations and infrastructure for the association. Those accidents accounted for 23 percent of serious crashes.
Cockpit databases that track a plane's location and warn pilots when they get too close to mountaintops or other obstructions have made rare what were once causes of many accidents, Darcy said.
Other safety systems have helped reduce mid-air collisions and wind-shear crashes, he said.
Africa remains the most dangerous region to fly, according to the IATA data. There were 3.93 serious accidents per million flights through November -- 29 percent less than the average for the previous five years.
Latin America was the second-most dangerous with 1.43 accidents per million flights, said the association.
Europe and North Asia had no serious accidents this year, according to IATA.
There's been one serious accident in about 10 million flights in North America, according to the group's data -- a crash of a First Air chartered Boeing 737-200 in Resolute, Canada. The crash killed 12 people on Aug. 20, according to AviationSafetyNetwork, a website that reports accidents. First Air is owned by 9,000 Inuit of northern Quebec.
IATA's data tracks crashes involving scheduled and nonscheduled carriers on Western-built aircraft. The year-end numbers won't include the accident Wednesday in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, in which a Soviet-made Tupolev Tu-134 crashed while trying to land. At least seven people were injured after the plane broke apart and caught fire, according to AviationSafetyNetwork, citing local news reports.
The association's definition of a serious accident also doesn't include some incidents that aviation investigators consider dangerous. For example, a Southwest Airlines Co. Boeing 737 that lost a 5-foot section of fuselage skin April 1 over Arizona wasn't included because the damage wasn't sufficient to destroy the jet.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board considered the incident serious enough to hold a public hearing earlier this year. The tear was traced to a manufacturing error, the National Transportation Safety Board said.
