The international commercial air transport industry suffered 23 accidents, of which three were fatal, during the first six months of 2017, according to statistics released today by the International Air Transport Association (IATA). The three fatal accidents resulted in eight onboard fatalities, and the myCargo Airlines Boeing 747-400 freighter accident in January also killed 35 people on the ground when the aircraft crashed while attempting to land.
The 23 accidents include two jet hull losses and four turboprop hull loss accidents. A hull loss accident is one in which the aircraft is destroyed or written off. The two jet hull loss accidents were the myCargo 747-400F and a Peruvian Airlines 737-300 accident in March.
Two of the four turboprop hull loss accidents, an Air Cargo Carriers Shorts 330 and a Goma Air Let L-410, were fatal accidents. Both of the fatal accidents occurred in May. The two nonfatal turboprop hull losses involved a Doren Air Congo L-410 in January and a South Sudan Supreme Airlines Antonov An-26 in March.
None of the six carriers that suffered hull loss accidents during the first six months of the year was an IATA member, but myCargo is on the IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) registry, IATA said.
The industry’s overall accident rate for the first six months of 2017 was 1.20 accidents per 1 million sectors, IATA said. The accident rate for non-IATA members was 2.03, and the rate for IATA members was 0.46 accidents per million sectors.
In the full year 2016, there were five fatal jet accidents and five fatal turboprop accidents industry-wide, resulting in 268 fatalities. Overall for the year, there were 65 accidents, according to the IATA Safety Report 2016, issued in April.