European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) member states recorded 16 accidents involving commercial air transport airplanes in 2016, or one accident in every 3 million flights — a 43 percent improvement over the previous year, EASA said in its Preliminary Safety Review 2017.
There was one fatal accident, which involved a Bombardier CRJ-200 cargo airplane that crashed in Sweden in January, killing both pilots, the report said. Data show that 12 fatal accidents involving operators from EASA member states occurred in the past 10 years, including one accident every year since 2014.
EASA also recorded 100 serious incidents in 2016, or one in every 16 million flights, an increase of 38 percent over 2015.
The report said key risk areas were aircraft upset, runway excursion, and aircraft system failure, “together with their associated safety issues: flight crew awareness, monitoring of aircraft parameters, handling of technical failures and CRM [crew resource management].”
