IATA: 2023 ‘Best-ever Year’ for Safe Flying

Photo source: IATA

Last year was the “best-ever” for safe flying, said the International Air Transport Association (IATA) this week.

There were 37 million aircraft movements in 2023, up by 17 percent over 2022, no hull losses or fatal accidents involving passenger jet aircraft but a single fatal accident involving a turboprop aircraft which resulted in 72 fatalities, IATA said.

Overall in 2023, there was one accident for every 1.26 million flights, an improvement from 1.30 in 2022 and the lowest rate in over a decade outperforming the five-year (2019-2023) average of 1.19.

The fatality risk also improved in the five-year period. According to IATA, at this level of safety, a person would have to travel by air every day for 103,239 years to experience a fatal accident.

“2023 safety performance continues to demonstrate that flying is the safest mode of transport. Aviation places its highest priority on safety and that shows in the 2023 performance,” said IATA Director General Willie Walsh.

Looking at regional performance, the IATA report found that the accident rate in 2023 improved over 2022 in all regions with the exceptions of North America and Asia Pacific. No regions experienced a jet hull loss in 2023.

In Europe, which has had a zero fatality risk since 2018, the accident rate improved and was better than the region’s five-year average.

In North America, the accident rate remained better than its five-year average.

According to IATA, it is crucial that the aviation industry maintain a strong safety culture and encourage the transparent and timely reporting of incidents and accidents in order to identify systemic issues and prevent future occurrences. In this direction, IATA is working on enhancing airline safety culture and encouraging states to provide timely, comprehensive and public accident reports.

“Safety enhancements and the prevention of future accidents stem from learning from past incidents. For airlines, this means cultivating a robust safety culture where every employee feels accountable for safety and is motivated and expected to report safety-related information,” said Walsh, adding that for countries this means providing timely, detailed, and public accident reports.

“Out of 226 accidents in the past six years, only 121 final accident reports have been made available,” he said.

According to last year’s report, despite the reduction in the number of fatal accidents, the number of fatalities rose from 121 in 2021 to 158 in 2022.