An aviation accident is an event during aircraft operation that results in serious injury, death, or significant destruction. An aviation incident is any operating event that compromises safety but does not escalate into an aviation accident. Preventing both accidents and incidents is the primary goal of aviation safety.
The most common causes of these accidents and incidents are technical or mechanical failures of the aircraft and pilot error. Adverse weather conditions, including turbulence, thunderstorms, icing, and low visibility, have also historically been major contributing factors in aviation accidents and incidents worldwide.
Since civil aviation became widespread in the mid-20th century, hundreds of incidents have occurred every year, with most being minor and non-fatal.
Definitions According to Annex 13 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation, an aviation accident is an occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft, which takes place from the time any person boards the aircraft with the intention of flight until all such persons have disembarked, and in which (a) a person is fatally or seriously injured, (b) the aircraft sustains significant damage or structural failure, or (c) the aircraft goes missing or becomes completely inaccessible. Annex 13 defines an aviation incident as an occurrence, other than an accident, associated with the operation of an aircraft that affects or could affect the safety of operation.
A hull loss occurs if an aircraft is damaged beyond repair, is lost, or becomes completely inaccessible.
History One of the earliest recorded aviation accidents occurred on May 10, 1785, when a hot air balloon crashed in Tullamore, County Offaly, Ireland. The resulting fire seriously damaged the town, destroying over 130 homes.Byrne, Michael. The Tullamore Balloon Fire – First Air Disaster in History , Offaly Historical and Archaeological Society website, 9 January 2007 (retrieved 7 July 2011), which in turn cites: Faulkner's Dublin Journal, 14 May 1785, and Finn's Leinster Journal.
The first accident involving a powered aircraft and the first involving an airplane occurred on September 17, 1908, when a Wright Model A crashed at Fort Myer, Virginia, USA. The pilot and co-inventor, Orville Wright, was injured, and the passenger, Signal Corps Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, was killed.
The period from 1958 to 1968 saw tremendous growth in aviation. Improvements in aviation safety and accident investigation procedures were rapidly advancing. In 1963, the Civil Aeronautics Board, under the leadership of then Deputy Director Bobbie R. Allen, established the National Aircraft Accident Investigation School in Oklahoma City.
The ICAO's third accident investigation division meeting, held in Montreal, Canada, in January 1965, laid the foundation for accident investigations throughout the world. The proposals were presented by the Director of the Civil Aeronautics Board Bureau of Safety, Bobbie R. Allen, who headed the U.S. delegation. The U.S. formally adopted the proposals at the White House on December 1, 1965.
The top 10 countries with the highest number of fatal civil airliner accidents from 1945 to 2021 are the United States, Russia, Canada, Brazil, Colombia, United Kingdom, France, Indonesia, Mexico, and India. The United Kingdom is noted to have the highest number of air crashes in Europe, with a total of 110 air crashes within the time period, and Indonesia is the highest in Asia at 104, followed by India at 95.
The 1970s decade saw the most fatalities from civil aviation accidents and the highest total number of them. The 1977 Tenerife airport disaster, in which two Boeing 747s collided, resulted in the largest loss of life in a single aviation accident, with 583 fatalities.
The rate of fatal accidents declined significantly from the early 1960s to the 1980s, falling by nearly 50% in ICAO-member countries during that period of time. However, the 1980s saw many high-profile crashes. 1985 was the worst year for aviation in terms of death toll from accidents. This includes the crash of Japan Airlines Flight 123, which is the deadliest aviation accident involving a single aircraft, excluding intentional crashes.
The rate of fatal aviation accidents involving airliners continued to decline worldwide through the 1990s. In the United States, deregulation generally did not impede this trend.
Safety
In over one hundred years of implementation, aviation safety has improved considerably. In modern times, two major manufacturers still produce heavy passenger aircraft for the civilian market: Boeing in the United States, and the European company Airbus. Both of these manufacturers place a huge emphasis on the use of aviation safety equipment, now a billion-dollar industry in its own right; safety is a key selling point for these companies, as they recognize that a poor safety record in the aviation industry is a threat to corporate survival.
Some major safety devices now required in commercial aircraft are: Evacuation slides, to aid rapid passenger exit from an aircraft in an emergency situation Advanced avionics, incorporating computerized auto-recovery and alert systems Turbine engines with improved durability and failure containment mechanisms Landing gear that can be lowered even after loss of power and hydraulics
Measured on a passenger-distance calculation, air travel is the safest form of transportation available. The BBC states, "UK airline operations are among the safest anywhere. When compared against all other modes of transport on a fatality per mile basis, air transport is the safest – six times safer than travelling by car and twice as safe as rail."
When measured by fatalities per person transported, however, buses are the safest form of transportation. The number of air travel fatalities per person are surpassed only by bicycles and motorcycles. This statistic is used by the insurance industry when calculating insurance rates for air travel.
For every billion kilometers traveled, trains have a fatality rate that is 12 times higher than that of air travel, and the fatality rate for automobiles is 62 times greater than for air travel. By contrast, for every billion journeys taken, buses are the safest form of transportation; using this measure, air travel is three times more dangerous than car transportation, and almost 30 times more dangerous than travelling by bus. The website attributes the source as an October 2000 article by editor Roger Ford in the magazine Modern Railways and based on an unidentified DETR survey.
A 2007 study by Popular Mechanics magazine found that passengers sitting at the back of an aeroplane are 40% more likely to survive a crash than those sitting at the front. The article quotes Boeing, the FAA, and a website on aircraft safety, all of which claim that there is no "safest" seat. The study examined 20 crashes, not taking into account the developments in safety after those accidents. However, a flight data recorder is usually mounted in the aircraft's empennage (tail section) where it is more likely to survive a severe crash.
Between 1983 and 2000, the survival rate for people in U.S. plane crashes was greater than 95 percent.
Global Aeronautical Distress and Safety System In an effort to prevent incidents such as the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, a new standard has been issued requiring all commercial aircraft to report their position every 15 minutes to air traffic controllers regardless of the country of origin. Introduced in 2016 by the ICAO, the regulation has no initial requirement for any new aircraft equipment to be fitted. The standard is part of a long-term plan, called the Global Aeronautical Distress and Safety System (GADSS), which will require new aircraft to be equipped with data broadcast systems that are in constant contact with air traffic controllers. The GADSS is similar to the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System (GMDSS) used for maritime safety.
Aviation Safety Reporting System The Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) collects voluntarily submitted aviation safety incident/situation reports from pilots, controllers and others. The ASRS uses reports to identify system deficiencies, issue alert messages, and produce two publications, CALLBACK, and ASRS Directline. The collected information is made available to the public, and is used by the FAA, NASA and other organizations working in research and flight safety.
Statistics
Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives (B3A)
The Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives (B3A), formerly known as the Aircraft Crashes Record Office (ACRO), a non-government organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, compiles statistics on aviation accidents of aircraft capable of carrying more than six passengers, excluding helicopters, balloons, and combat aircraft. ACRO only considers crashes in which the aircraft has suffered such damage that it is removed from service, which will further reduce the statistics for incidents and fatalities compared to some other data. The total fatalities due to aviation accidents since 1970 are 83,772. The total number of incidents is 11,164.
According to ACRO, recent years have been considerably safer for aviation, with fewer than 170 incidents every year between 2009 and 2017, compared to as many as 226 as recently as 1998.
The annual fatalities figure is less than 1,000 for ten of the fourteen years between 2007 and 2020, the year 2023 experiencing the lowest number of fatalities, at 246, since the end of World War II.
2014 included the disappearance of flight MH370 over the Indian Ocean and the shootdown of flight MH17 as part of the war in Donbas. The total number of fatalities in 2014 was 869 more than in 2013.
Deaths and incidents in the world per year according to ACRO and Bureau of Aircraft Accident Archives data, :
Year Deaths Number of incidents1970 2,219 3311971 2,278 3121972 3,355 3761973 2,950 3721974 2,782 3171975 1,930 3321976 2,416 3071977 2,556 3721978 2,220 4081979 2,593 3821980 2,343 3791981 1,585 3201982 2,066 3091983 2,047 2891984 1,329 2841985 3,023 2961986 1,781 2761987 2,157 3411988 2,392 3061989 2,603 3371990 1,417 2821991 2,023 2691992 2,325 2891993 1,782 2991994 1,998 2491995 1,848 2951996 2,856 2731997 1,797 2521998 1,761 2501999 1,178 2332000 1,634 2322001 1,545 2302002 1,388 2302003 1,260 2252004 795 1952005 1,478 2122006 1,322 2122007 1,008 1952008 916 2122009 1,120 1822010 1,153 1882011 850 1812012 807 1782013 465 1732014 1,352 1672015 938 1752016 647 1522017 404 1292018 1,038 1332019 586 1482020 483 1152021 411 1152022 366 1012023 246 1092024 622 1182025 810 1102026 year-to-date as of Sept 2431769
(Data have significantly changed since November 2015 after a major upgrade to the death rate and crash rate web pages. Death rate page as it appeared on November 4, 2015. Crash rate page as it appeared on November 4, 2015. This may reflect a change between a static and dynamic web page, where data were made to be automatically updated based on the incidents in their archives.)
Annual Aviation Safety Review (EASA) The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) is tasked by Article 15(4) of Regulation (EC) No 216/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council of February 20, 2008, to provide an annual review of aviation safety.
The Annual Safety Review presents statistics on European and worldwide civil aviation safety. Statistics are grouped according to type of operation, for instance, commercial air transport, and aircraft category, such as aeroplanes, helicopters, gliders, etc.