IATA: 2023 - the safest year for air travel

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has published the Annual Flight Safety Report for the year 2023. Passenger aviation continues to make progress in terms of safety, and according to several parameters, 2023 is the safest year in the entire history of aviation.

Even though there were exactly 37 million aircraft movements in 2023 (jet and turboprops), i.e. 17% more than the previous year — in 2023 there were no fatal accidents involving jet (jet) aircraft.

However, there has been only one fatal accident involving a turboprop aircraft (in Pokhara, Nepal). It is worth mentioning that Nepal is considered one of the most dangerous countries in the world for air operations due to the difficult terrain, sudden changes in weather and outdated aircraft.

The rate of all accidents was one accident for every 1.26 million flights, a considerable improvement from 2022 and the lowest rate in over a decade.

The risk of a fatal accident improved to 0.03 in 2023 from 0.11 in 2022 and 0.11 for the five years, 2019-2023. At this level of safety, a person would have to travel by air every day for about a hundred thousand years to die in a plane crash.

In Europe the rate of all accidents improved from 0.98 per million sectors in 2022 to 0.48 accidents in 2023. This rate is better than the 5-year average of the region. The region has a fatal accident risk of zero as of 2018. The largest proportion of accidents were related to landing gear malfunctions.

These data continue to prove that flying is the safest mode of transportation. Flight safety is the number 1 priority in aviation - and this is reflected in the performance from 2023.