Fewer airline crashes occurred around the world in 2009 than during the previous year, but deaths increased, an industry group said on Thursday.
There were 18 fatal airline accidents last year compared to 23 fatal accidents in 2008, the International Air Transport Association said.
There were, however, 685 fatalities in 2009 compared to 502 the previous year. Those numbers include both jet and turboprop planes.
The major accident rate for 2009 – 0.7 accidents per million flights – was the second lowest ever and is more than a third lower than the rate 10 years ago, the association said. The rate is based on Western-built jets destroyed, substantially damaged or written off as losses by air carriers.
Three accidents accounted for most of the deaths:
Air France Flight 447 disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean en route from Brazil to France with 228 people aboard on June 1. French authorities announced on Wednesday that they will begin a new $13m search for the remains of the Airbus A330.
A Yemeni Airways Airbus A310 crashed into the Indian Ocean off the Comoros Islands on June 30, killing 152 people on board. A 12-year-old girl clinging to debris survived.
A Russian-made jetliner bound for Armenia crashed in northwest Iran shortly after taking off from Tehran on July 15. All 168 people on board were killed.
The annual number of deaths has fluctuated over the past decade, peaking in 2005 at 1 035, the association said.
The best news is that the current accident rate is only about half of what it was in the 1990s, thanks in part to technology advancements, said Jim Burin, director of technical programs at the Flight Safety Foundation, an international aviation safety organisation in Alexandria, Virginia.
Pilots flying planes into the ground were once the top cause of airline crashes, but widespread use of improved warning systems that alert pilots in time to correct the aircraft’s course have all but eliminated those kinds of accidents, he said.
Similarly, another kind of warning system alerts pilots if a plane is on course to collide with another airliner and gives directions on which way to turn to avoid the collision. That has dramatically decreased midair collisions, Burin said.
– AP