IATA Reports Slight Increase in Global Commercial Aviation Accidents in 2022

According to a report released by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) on Tuesday, the number of accidents in the global commercial aviation industry increased to 39 last year, resulting in an accident rate of 1.21 per every 826,088 flights. On a positive note, the fatal accident rate in the industry saw an improvement, decreasing to 0.16 per million sectors in 2022 from 0.27 per million sectors in 2021.

According to reports, the commercial aviation industry experienced a total of 39 accidents in 2022, which is higher than the 29 accidents recorded in 2021. The accident rate also increased from 1.13 per million sectors in 2021 to 1.21 in 2022. However, airlines only experience one accident for every 8,26,088 flights, so the overall probability of an accident is low. In fact, if a person were to take a flight every day, they would need to continue flying for 2,263 years before encountering an accident.

IATA

The accident count mentioned only refers to commercial aviation activities that involve scheduled/charter passenger or cargo services. This count does not include executive jet operations, maintenance/test flights, and training. In 2022, there were slightly over 32 million flights recorded, which is a 25 percent increase from the previous year, but still 31 percent lower than the figure recorded in 2019.

According to the report, fatalities from accidents reduced from seven in 2021 to five in 2022. This improvement led to a decrease in the fatal accident rate from 0.27 per million sectors in 2021 to 0.16 in 2022. Additionally, the fatal accident rate of 0.16 was better than the 5-year average of 0.20. However, even with the decline in the number of fatal accidents, the number of deaths resulting from these accidents increased from 121 to 158, as stated in the report.

According to IATA, the most significant loss of life happened in China when a single aircraft accident killed 132 individuals, followed by an incident in Tanzania that claimed 19 lives. “Aviation accidents are infrequent occurrences, as evidenced by the fact that there were only five fatal incidents out of 32.2 million flights in 2022. This indicates that flying is one of the safest activities one can participate in. However, despite the extremely low risk associated with flying, it is not without risk,” noted IATA Director General Willie Walsh.