2016: Safest Year Ever for Air Travel

When airline crashes occur they make the news. And 2016 had its fair share of airline tragedies, among them the Egyptair flight in May and the LaMia jet carrying a Brazilian football team in November, but experts are saying that 2016 was one of the safest years in the history of aviation.

According to the Aviation Safety Network, an independent nonprofit organization that tracks crash data, 18 civilian airplane accidents accounted for 320 deaths across the globe in 2016. The only year with fewer deaths was 2013 with 265, The Telegraph reports.

“Whilst any accident is too many, we would argue that such low accident rates demonstrate the effectiveness of aviation safety standards in mitigating flight safety risks,’’ said Adrian Young, senior aviation consultant for to70, an international aviation consultancy based in the Hague.

The focus, experts say, is the fact that flying has never been safer and this is due to better airplanes, advanced technologies, improved safety procedures, and closer collaboration among nations. The fewer deaths in the 2000s than in all previous decades in modern aviation history bears this out.