Industrial air journey is safer than ever, with the chance of dying halving each decade, a brand new examine finds.
Researchers on the Massachusetts Institute of Expertise (MIT) discovered that the worldwide dying charge fell to 1 per 13.7 million individuals between 2018 and 2022, down from 1 per 7.9 million individuals between 2008 and 2017. Vital enchancment.
These figures are a far cry from the early days of business air journey, when between 1968 and 1977 there was one dying for each 350,000 flights.
“Aviation security continues to enhance,” mentioned examine co-author Arnold Barnett, a professor at MIT.
From 1978 to 1987, one particular person died for each 750,000 passengers on board.
From 1988 to 1997, the chance of dying was 1 in 1.3 million, and from 1998 to 2007, the chance of dying was 1 in 2.7 million.
The final main business aviation catastrophe in the US occurred in 2009, when Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashed, killing 50 individuals. However Professor Barnett warned continued progress was not assured.
Current crashes on U.S. runways have made headlines this yr, with the FBI pressuring Boeing to ask why a door jam on an Alaska Airways 737 Max 9 plane broke mid-flight in January.
The general figures masks enormous variations in aviation security world wide, with the examine classifying nations into three tiers based mostly on their security data.
The primary class consists of the US, EU nations and European nations equivalent to Montenegro, Norway, Switzerland, and the UK, in addition to Australia, Canada, China, Israel, Japan, and New Zealand.
Class 2 consists of Bahrain, Bosnia, Brazil, Brunei, Chile, Hong Kong, India, Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Qatar, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates .
The remainder of the world falls into the third class.