Flying is safe!
The 243 member airlines of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) were able to announce that 2012 was their safest year in their history as at December 31.
Not a single aircraft of Western design had to be written off due to a total loss. This means that the risk of being killed in an aircraft accident has never been as low as it was last year.
Accordingly, 496 people died in global air traffic in 2012. It should be noted that around 3.1 billion passengers will travel by plane this year. Incidentally, 100 years ago, there were zero passengers! According to the study, Europe was the safest region for air travel with no fatalities, while the Middle East and Africa again proved to be the most accident-prone regions with 214 fatalities.
Günther Matschnigg, IATA Senior Vice President safety, operations & infrastructure, explained at the IATA global media briefing in December that "if a person traveled by plane once a day, they would have to wait around 14,000 years before they were involved in an accident". In other words, one accident for every 5.3 million flights in the entire aviation industry, including non-IATA members. As recently as 2000, a fatal passenger accident occurred on average every 13.5 days. In 2012, this period amounted to more than 28 days. The share of well-known airlines in the accident rate has become smaller and smaller.
IATA members recorded 1.03 incidents per million air miles. Incidentally, all major airlines are members of IATA.
In addition to technical improvements to aircraft, airport infrastructure and airspace monitoring, the main reasons for the increase in safety are the increasing implementation of global safety standards for flight operations, the training of specialist personnel and independent and effective government monitoring measures.
The major airlines, including the German, Austrian and Swiss airlines, were spared any serious accidents.
Kurt Hofmann
January 2013
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