Scheduled commercial flights were involved in five fatal accidents in 2017 — the lowest number in recent history, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) says in its annual ICAO Safety Report.
The report, released Wednesday, said that the five fatal accidents — a decrease from seven in 2016 — were associated with 50 fatalities. With 4.1 billion passengers traveling on scheduled commercial flights in 2017, the rate of 12.2 fatalities per billion passengers “represents the safest year ever on the record for aviation,” ICAO said.
The trend over the past 10 years has been toward reductions in numbers of both fatal accidents and fatalities, the report said.
Nevertheless, 2017 data showed that the total number of accidents increased from 75 in 2016 to 88 in 2017, and the accident rate increased from 2.1 accidents per million departures in 2016 to 2.4 per million in 2017.