Flying safety reached “best-ever” results in 2023, according to International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) 2023 Annual Safety Report for global aviation. There were no hull losses and no passenger jet aircraft fatal accidents last year and the accident rate was far lower than the 5-year average.
There were 37 million aircraft movements in 2023 (jet and turboprop), an increase of 17% on the previous year, with an all accident rate of 0.80 per million sectors, or one accident for every 1.26 million flights. This is an improvement from the 1.30 rate in 2022 and the lowest rate in over a decade. Last year also outperformed the 5-year (2019-2023) rolling average of 1.19 (an average one accident for every 880,293 flights).
The fatality risk improved to 0.03 in 2023 from 0.11 in 2022 and 0.11 for the 5-year average of 2019-2023. At this level of safety, on average, a person would have to travel by air every day for 103,239 years to experience a fatal accident.
IATA member airlines and IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) registered airlines experienced no fatal accident in 2023. A single fatal accident occurred in 2023, on a turboprop aircraft, resulting in 72 fatalities. This is however still a reduction from 5 fatal accidents in 2022 and an improvement on the 5-year average which was also 5.
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.
Willie Walsh, IATA Director General
“A single fatal turboprop accident with 72 fatalities, however, reminds us that we can never take safety for granted”, said IATA Director General Willie Walsh. “And two high profile accidents in the first month of 2024 show that, even if flying is among the safest activities a person can do, there is always room to improve. This is what we have done throughout our history. And we will continue to make flying ever safer.”
Regionally, except for North America and Asia Pacific, all accident rate in 2023 compared to 2022 improved around the world. The all accident rate in North America rose from 0.53 per million sectors in 2022 to 1.14 in 2023, but remained better than its 5-year average of 1.21. The largest proportion of accidents in 2023 were related to landing gear collapses. Asia-Pacific recorded a fatal turboprop hull loss, a loss-of-control accident in Nepal in January 2023 with 72 fatalities. As a consequence, all regions except Asia-Pacific recorded a fatality risk of zero in 2023.
Meanwhile, Europe more than halved its all accident rate from 0.98 per million sectors in 2022 to 0.48 in 2023. This rate is better than the region’s 5-year average of 0.77 accidents per million sectors. The region has had a fatality risk of zero since 2018. Similarly to North America, the largest proportion of accidents were related to landing gear collapses.
The only region to achieve an all accident rate of 0 was North Asia, decreasing from an already low rate of 0.45 accidents per million sectors in 2022. This was better than the region’s 5-year average of 0.16 accidents per million sectors. The fatality risk rate also went down to 0, from 0.23 in 2022.
