This post was originally published on this site
Jan. 24, 2018 9:31 a.m. ET
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ISTOCK
Last year was the safest year ever for air travel, with zero passenger airline fatal accidents world-wide. There hasn’t been a fatal crash at a major U.S. passenger airline since 2009.
Good luck or good work? Safety experts say both. (And no, they don’t attribute this to Trump administration policies.)
We’re not so far removed from the days of a dozen fatal accidents world-wide and 700 to 1,000 deaths every year. The improvement marks the culmination of three decades of methodical improvements, commercial aviation experts say. But recent advances to aircraft and airports, stiffer regulations and corporate changes at airlines and leasing companies are the top factors behind these results.
“It’s just stunning,” says
William Voss,
a safety consultant and former official at the Federal Aviation Administration and other major aviation groups. “I hope that we can sustain it, but that’s hard to do.”
Flying was considered one of the safest modes of transportation in the 1950s. The odds of an accident were about one in 50,000. Now the chance of dying in an airline crash is about one in 50 million, says
Paul Hayes,
director of air safety at London-based Flight Ascend Consultancy.
What’s perhaps most remarkable: Accident rates in developing countries are dropping along with highly regulated, wealthy aviation markets.
Accidents Will Happen Less
The number of accidents* on commercial flights has declined world-wide.
150
accidents
100
70
50
0
2008
2010
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