Aviation consulting firm To70 and the Aviation Safety Network both reported on Tuesday that there were more than 500 deaths from passenger airline crashes last year, but emphasised that fatal crashes remain rare.
To70 estimated the fatal accident rate for large commercial passenger flights at 0.36 per million flights, or one fatal accident for every three million flights.
That is up from 2017's 0.06 per million flight rate and above the most recent five-year average of 0.24 per million flights. There were 13 deaths in 2017 in two fatal crashes worldwide, but both were on regional turboprop aircraft.
Over the past two decades, aviation deaths around the world have been falling.
As recently as 2005, there were 1,015 deaths aboard commercial passenger flights worldwide.
Despite the increase, 2018 was still the third-safest year in terms of the number of fatal accidents, and the ninth safest measured by deaths, the Aviation Safety Network said.
"If the accident rate had remained the same as 10 years ago, there would have been 39 fatal accidents last year," Aviation Safety Network's chief executive Harro Ranter said. "This shows the enormous progress in terms of safety in the past two decades."
Straits Times
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