2017 Was Safest Year for Commercial Travel With No Jet Fatalities

2017 Safest Year for Commercial Travel With No Jet Fatalities

If you have a fear of flying, take solace in the fact that 2017 safest year for commercial travel, with no fatalities occurring on  a commercial airline.

According to Reuters:

Dutch aviation consulting firm To70 and the Aviation Safety Network both reported Monday there were no commercial passenger jet fatalities in 2017. “2017 was the safest year for aviation ever,” said Adrian Young of To70.

To70 estimated that the fatal accident rate for large commercial passenger flights is 0.06 per million flights, or one fatal accident for every 16 million flights.

The Aviation Safety Network also reported there were no commercial passenger jet deaths in 2017, but 10 fatal airliner accidents resulting in 44 fatalities onboard and 35 persons on the ground, including cargo planes and commercial passenger turbo prop aircraft.

That figure includes 12 people killed on Dec. 31 when a Nature Air Cessna 208B Grand Caravan aircraft crashed minutes after takeoff into a mountainous area off the beach town of Punta Islita, Costa Rica.

This is pretty incredible when you think about it, and I think it speaks volumes of the incredible safety standards and improvement in aviation technology.  This is made even more incredible by the fact that in 2016, the FAA handled 15,631,000 flights.  That’s just the FAA (although that also includes non-commercial flights!  So when you think about how on a regular basis there are planes around the world traveling and that it’s an incredibly safe way to get around, we truly do live in an incredible age of aviation!

It has been a trend that as time go on, aviation security improves, and hopefully this year will be no different.  It’s exciting, and hopefully with years going forward we can make it even safer to minimize even further the number of deaths that occur from all around commercial travel.