No Fatal Passenger-Jet Accidents In 2017; Five Fatal

Turboprop Crashes

Troops sift through the wreckage of flight TK-6491 in January 2017 near Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
Getty Images

The global airline industry saw its total accident and fatal accident rates cut by one-
third in 2017 compared to 2016, well below the five year-average in each category,
according to IATA’s 2017 Airline Safety Performance report.

Thirteen hull losses were recorded in 2017, compared to 20 in 2016. Nine were
turboprops and four were jets.

“Some 4.1 billion travelers flew safely on 41.8 million flights,” IATA DG and CEO
Alexandre de Juniac said. “In 2017 there were incidents and accidents that we will
learn from through the investigative process, just as we will learn from the recent
tragedies in Russia and Iran.”

“Complementing that knowledge are insights we can gain from the millions of
flights that operate safely,” de Juniac said. “Data from these operations is powering
the development of predictive analytics that will eventually enable us to eliminate
the conditions that lead to accidents.”

Of the six fatal airline accidents in 2017, five involved turboprop aircraft and one
involved a cargo jet; no passenger jet aircraft experienced a fatal accident during
the year. Two of the fatal accidents were on passenger flights, while the other four
involved cargo flights. The cargo jet flight—an ACT Airlines Boeing 747F that
crashed into a village in Kyrgyzstan in January 2017—also resulted in the deaths of
35 people on the ground.
The six fatal accidents in 2017 took the lives of 19 onboard passengers. The nine
fatal accidents recorded in 2016 resulted in 202 onboard fatalities.

“Our determination to make this very safe industry even safer continues,” de Juniac
said. “The industry knows that every fatality is a tragedy. Our common goal is for
every flight to take-off and land safely.”

The total number of accidents in 2017 fell 32.8% year-over-year (YOY) to 45, below
the five-year average of 74.8 accidents per year. Of 41.8 million total flights in 2017,
this equaled 1.08 accidents per million flights.

For major jet accidents resulting in a hull loss, the 2017 rate was 0.11 per 1 million
flights, or the equivalent of one major accident for every 8.7 million flights, IATA
calculated. There were four jet hull losses in 2017, one of which involved fatalities
(the January ACT Airlines 747F crash in Kyrgyzstan), and included jets from Asia-
Pacific, CIS, Europe and Latin America-Caribbean carriers.

For turboprops, the 2017 loss rate—1.3 per 1 million flights—faltered from 2016
(1.01 per 1 million flights) but bettered the five-year average of 2.18 per 1 million
flights. Accidents involving turboprop aircraft represented 44% of all accidents in
2017 and 83% of fatal accidents.

There were nine turboprop hull losses in 2017, five of which involved fatalities, and
included aircraft from African, Asia-Pacific, CIS and North American carriers.
While noting that Sub-Saharan African carriers had no jet hull losses and zero fatal
accidents involving jets or turboprops for a second consecutive year, the region
nonetheless saw an increase in turboprop hull losses in 2017, from 1.52 per million
in 2016 to 5.7 per million in 2017.

“There is still a large gap to cover in the safety performance of the continent’s
turboprop fleet,” de Juniac said. “Counting all accidents, the performance of
airlines on the IOSA [IATA Operational Safety Audit] registry was more than three
times better than non-IOSA airlines in the region … [We] encourage African nations
to incorporate IOSA and the IATA Standard Safety Assessment (ISSA) into their
safety oversight systems.”