Civil Aviation Safety Review 2019: A Year Of Difficult Questions

In 2019 there were 86 accidents, 8 of which were fatal, resulting in 257 fatalities (see our methodology below). In 2018 there were 160 accidents, 13 of which were fatal, resulting in 534 fatalities. These follow a historic low in 2017 with only two fatal accidents involving regional turboprops (out of 48 accidents) that resulted in the loss of 13 lives.

Despite two high-profile accidents this past year, an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX and an Aeroflot Sukhoi Superjet, and an accident to a Fokker 100 just before the year’s end, fatal accidents to large passenger aircraft remain rare events. Only two other accidents, a piston aircraft in March and a turboprop in November, resulted in more than 10 casualties.

An estimated 4,2% growth in air traffic for 2019 over 2018 means that the fatal accident rate for large aeroplanes in commercial air transport is just 0.18 (2018: 0.20) fatal accidents per million flights. That is an average of one fatal accident every 5.58 million flights.