What a wild statistic.
Imagine trying to soothe a nervous flier with that information. Lol
paywall
Nyermmm Pen missile!
The trend highlights the difficulty—if not impossibility—of protecting civilian aviation in war zones, even for rigorous aviation regulators, because of the politics of war. Early last century similar woes plagued sea travel, when belligerents targeted ocean transport.
[…]
Over the period since Russian-backed forces in July 2014 shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine, the only other single cause directly linked to hundreds of commercial-aviation deaths was design flaws in Boeing’s 737 MAX jetliners. Two crashes within five months that together claimed 346 lives were blamed on the problems, which led to a global grounding of the aircraft in 2019. Boeing and regulators say those issues are now remedied.
Aviation accidents are sometimes described as being caused by pilot error or other broad descriptions of events, but to investigators and aviation regulators who want to understand events in detail so that underlying causes can be addressed, such sweeping categories offer little insight.
Commercial aviation has grown far safer precisely because chronic dangers have been repeatedly identified and addressed. The industry has widely adopted a no-blame approach to reporting problems and investigating accidents so that systemic risks can be addressed, without fear of reprisals, rather than ignored or hidden.
Fatalities on scheduled commercial flights last year fell to 17 people per billion passengers flown, down from 50 people per billion passengers in 2022, according to the United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization, punctuating a broader trend in recent decades that shows traveling by commercial jet is getting safer. The accident rate, for example, dropped to 1.87 per million departures last year from 2.05 per million departures in 2022.
Still, the proliferation of major conflicts has renewed concerns from aviation security experts about how governments can successfully navigate the safety of civilian aircraft alongside the pressure to keep the timing and strategy of military strikes secret, and the economic impact of closing airspace.
