MH370 to Germanwings: a brutal year for aviation industry
The tragic loss of Germanwings flight 4U9525 is the latest in a line of high profile aviation plane crashes since the loss of Malaysia airlines flight MH370.
There was a spike in airline accident deaths to 641 from 210 in 2013 despite an overall fall in the number of accidents, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said in its annual safety report earlier this month.
They include 162 people killed when an AirAsia Airbus A320 – the same aircraft as in the Germanwings crash near Digne in the French Alps yesterday – crashed into the Java Sea in December.
Malaysia Airlines MH370
Last year’s figures were also increased by the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines MH370, which was carrying 239 people when it vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing last March.
But the number does not include the 298 dead in the Malaysia Airlines MH17 crash in Ukraine in July, which is not counted as an accident. The IATA said the five-year average for airline disaster deaths is 517.
However, there were fewer air accidents in total last year, falling from 16 in 2013 to 12, against a five-year average of 19, the IATA said.
AirAsia and Air Algerie
Three of the crashes involved jet airliners and accounted for the bulk of deaths, with MH370 and the AirAsia jet joined by an Air Algerie plane which crashed in bad weather in Mali in July, killing 116.
The IATA said just one in 4.4 million flights last year resulted in destruction or serious damage to an aircraft, down from one in 2.4 million in 2013.
According to the International Civil Aviation Organization, scheduled commercial international and domestic flights moved approximately 3.1 billion passengers in 2013, the latest year for which statistics are available. That was up from 2.9 billion passengers in 2012.