A good year for aviation safety is turning into a bad year with 250 passenger aircraft fatalities, 217 in the last four days, the worst since 2019 and following a breakthrough 2023 which was the safest year in aviation history). Average fatalities annually in the five years pre-pandemic was 303.4.
The previous year 2023 saw no fatal accidents or hull losses for jet aircraft, leading to a record-low fatality risk rate of 0.03 rate per million sectors. The all accident rate was 0.80 per million sectors in 2023 (one accident for every 1.26 million flights).
There were 30 total accidents in 2023, an improvement from 42 accidents in 2022. The all accident rate decreased from 1.30 per million sectors in 2022 to 0.80 in 2023. Overall, there was an average of one accident for every 880,293 flights.
