Large Passenger Plane Crash Death Toll on the Rise Worldwide in 2020, Report Says

Last year’s reduction in aviation deaths across the globe came amid a considerable decline in flights caused by the COVID-19 pandemic; the number of commercial flights decreased by 42% to 24.4 million, according to the tracking website Flightradar24.

The Dutch aviation consulting firm To70 reported on Friday that the death toll from large commercial plane crashes increased to 299 worldwide in 2020, while the number of such accidents plummeted over 50% last year.

To70 noted that in 2020, large commercial aircraft had 0.27 fatal accidents per million flights, which means that one fatal crash occurred during every 3.7 million flights, up from 0.18 such crashes per million flights in 2019.

The firm’s review specifically singled out a January 2020 plane crash in which a Ukrainian commercial place was downed in Iranian airspace, killing all 176 people on board.

The May 2020 crash of a Pakistan passenger jet became the second deadliest such accident last year, claiming the lives of 98 people.

In the past two decades, aviation deaths worldwide have dropped significantly, with the Aviation Security Network (ASN) reporting that in 2005, a total of 1,015 people died during commercial passenger flights across the globe.

ASN said that the last five years saw an average of 14 fatal accidents for commercial passenger and cargo planes, killing 345 people annually.

According to ASN, 2017 was the safest year in the entire history of observations, given that there were only two fatal accidents, which left 13 people dead, at the time.

Sourse: sputniknews.com