Jaunted

Airline Safety / Airlines / Travel Safety / IATA / Accidents / → All Tags

The IATA Says That 2009 Was the Second Safest Year For Air Travel

So despite the tragedies of several crashes and the rash of people acting stupid on airplanes and thus endangering the whole airplane, the IATA has declared that 2009 was the second safest year for air travel. The International Air Transport Association measured how many accidents there were with how many flights flew in western-built jets throughout the year, and the results are surprisingly low:

Last year's global accident rate equated to 0.71 aircraft hulls lost per million flights, an improvement on the 0.81 in 2008, but short of the 2006 record of 0.65, the International Air Transport Association said in a report. IATA said the 2009 rate was a 36 percent improvement on 2000 levels.

That means that 2009 saw one accident for every 1.4 million flights, which as everyone knows is still a better safety record than driving, bicycling, and boating. Hopefully 2010 will be an even safer year, and we're so far on a good run with no major airline incidents in the last one and a half months.

Related Stories:
· 2009 was second safest year for air travel [Reuters]
· Travel Safety [Jaunted]

[Photo: debaird]