Flight International - January 19, 2016

22 | Flight International | 19-25 January 2016 flightglobal.com

While aviation disasters

will always loom large in

the public’s imagination,

the truth is that last year

continued a trend towards

fewer and fewer accidents

and greater passenger safety

COVER STORY

DAVID LEARMOUNT LONDON

AVIATION SAFETY

2015 – THE FACTS

Footage of TransAsia Airways incident

someone on board, the figures would be 18 ac-

cidents and 432 deaths. So, between 2014 and

2015, the previous lowest fatal accident total

has been halved (see graph, p24).

Flightglobal’s Ascend consultancy ob-

serves: “If the improvement in air safety since

2010 is maintained for the rest of the current

decade, it will equate to some 4,400 fewer

passenger and crew fatalities than during

2000-09.” Not only have accident numbers

T

he year 2015 will go down in aviation

history as a watershed, when the

focus on passenger safety shifted

from technical and operational

concerns to security issues.

Airline safety – judged by the relative ab-

sence of genuine accidents and disregarding

the results of deliberate hostile action – seems

to break new records every year, and 2015 was

no exception. Potential security risks, on the

other hand, are rising – and increasing passen-

ger casualty numbers bear witness to that.

Some security risks are familiar but heightened;

others are new and, so far, elude solution.

Last year there were nine fatal airline acci-

dents in which a total of 176 people died, com-

pared with 19 events and 671 deaths in 2014.

The 19 fatal accidents total was an all-time low,

but if the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines

flight MH370 in March 2014 should eventually

be found to be the result of a deliberate act by

REX/Shutterstock

PA