Although the world’s airlines flew a record of nearly 5 billion passengers in 2025 and were involved in fewer accidents than the previous year, fatalities increased, according to data from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
In its 2026 Safety Report, issued July 23, ICAO presented data for airplanes with a maximum takeoff mass of more than 5,700 kg (12,566 lb) and said that the 5 billion passengers traveled on 38 million flights, and that the number of accidents in 2025 decreased to 85, including four fatal accidents, down from 95 accidents and 10 fatal accidents the previous year.
“Put simply, airlines conducted more flights while experiencing fewer accidents overall,” ICAO said.
ICAO Council President Toshiyuki Onuma added, “These results demonstrate that aviation can and must continue to become safer even as more people fly.”
The report noted that the worldwide accident rate — which the report described as one of the clearest indicators of progress — declined in 2025 to 2.2 accidents per million departures, down 13 percent from the 2024 rate of 2.6 accidents per million departures.
The fatal accident rate also declined, down from 0.27 fatal accidents per million departures in 2024 to 0.11 per million in 2025, the report said.
Despite the decrease in the number of fatal accidents, the number of individuals killed increased to 387 in 2025, up from 296 in 2024. Of the 2025 fatalities, 260 (67 percent) resulted from one accident — the June 12 crash of an Air India Boeing 787-800 that lost power and crashed after takeoff from Ahmedabad International Airport, killing all but one of the 242 passengers and crew, along with 19 people on the ground. Investigation of the accident is continuing.
“This illustrates one of the central challenges facing modern aviation safety,” ICAO said. “The industry has become highly effective at preventing accidents, but eliminating the rare catastrophic events that can cause large numbers of fatalities remains a challenge and priority.”
The report noted that ICAO has focused its accident-prevention efforts on the five high risk categories — controlled flight into terrain, loss of control–in flight, midair collision, runway excursions, and runway incursions — that are responsible for most fatalities. In 2025, accidents in those categories accounted for more than half of all fatalities the report said.
The document, which also assessed the effectiveness of safety oversight by national aviation authorities, said that oversight improved worldwide in 2025, as did the number of nations that met ICAO’s target level for oversight. Globally, the greatest weaknesses involved the resolution of identified safety issues, maintaining adequate numbers of qualified technical personnel, and conducting effective ongoing safety surveillance and inspections, the report said.
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