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Later last month, a helicopter and passenger aircraft collided into the air over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., killing all 67 people on both aircraft. This week, a Delta jet crashed on a Toronto runway, killing no one, but rolled upside down. During these two incidents, commuter planes descended off the coast of Alaska and killed 10 people. Two people were then killed in an airborne collision in Arizona on Wednesday. Are your enviable safety records broken?
It helps to consider small and large aircraft separately. Flying is often said to be the safest mode of transport. But it depends. It's definitely true for commercial passenger aircraft. However, small commuter planes like those crashed in Alaska are at a higher per hour risk compared to car travel, while the smallest private planes are 10 times more dangerous than driving.
The example above actually is only a subset of the 10 deadly air accidents in the United States in January. But it's far from showing an astounding spread of the incident, and this was the month's all-time low. Sadly, fatal crashes on small planes are not uncommon, but again, this trend is generally in the right direction.
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Focusing on large commercial passenger flights, the fatal Washington crash is an exception that proves the rule of increasing safety. The first mass deadly flight in the US that crashed a turboprop plane that killed 49 people in New York in 2009. From the years of the 1980s to the early 1990s, every few years today, a fatal crash of a large plane has been in the form of several years.
The same trends become apparent all over the world. In all regions outside of Africa, the rate of significant crashes on large planes is, even before, one-third of what it was 20 years ago. Commercial aviation travel remains extremely safe.
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However, while lethal passenger airliner crashes remain rare, these extreme and often luck-dependent edge cases are not necessarily the best measure for a more broadly assessed aviation safety. What happens when we expand our standards to incidents that have been fortunate enough to not lead to major loss of life? Is there an ominous tendency under the surface that has not yet been fully realized?
Some people are raising concerns about increasingly crowded skies with the advent of civilian air taxis and drones. There have been no major incidents yet, but US data shows that close encounters between commercial airliner and drones are increasing, with dozens of close calls and minor collisions reported by pilots each year. The department indicates that it requires a change of course.
Alarms have also been raised regarding intrusions of large jets, particularly runways. In particular, errors occur as air traffic management staff grow more and more as two planes navigate takeoff and landing. These incidents became more common in the 2000s and early 2010s, but the closest mistakes are extremely rare (which occur less than one time at a million takeoffs or landings), and the most recent number If the price had not falled slightly over the year, the price would remained flat.
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Nevertheless, hundreds of these federal employees have been fired in the so-called rounds of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, making it a full-scale US air transport management service that is already chronically understaffed. There is growing concern that it could lead to a crisis. War on inefficiency.
The helicopter pilots interacted with the control tower leading to the collision and appeared to have seen the proximity of the jet, but the lack of personnel in air traffic control has been cited as a possible factor in DC crashes.
There is also concern over the rise in turbulence supported by climate change after a particularly extreme case of London-to-Singapore flight last year. So far, there is no evidence of an increase in the proportion of serious cases caused by these conditions.
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Putting all the available evidence together, there is certainly no cause for self-satisfaction. And some risks appear to be higher today than in the past 10 or 2 years. However, despite recent high-profile incidents, there are no indications of deterioration in safety in the last few months or years. Given the enormously growing complexity, the ongoing excellent safety record for commercial air travel is surprising.
John.burn-murdoch@ft.com, @jburnmurdoch
