According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA) organization publication regarding aviation safety, 2017 was the safest year ever, in the airline industry. This is a continuation of the last 10 years’ trend in safety, and overall safety performance improved by 54%.
The accident rate in 2016 was 1.61 accidents per million flights, compared with 3.53 in 2007. In 2016, more than 3.7 billion passengers flew safely on over 40.4 million commercial flights.

Some numbers:

• The all-accident rate (measured in accidents per 1 million flights) was 1.08, an improvement over the all-accident rate of 1.68 in 2016 and the rate of 2.01 for the previous 5-year period (2012-2016).
• The 2017 rate for major jet accidents (measured in jet hull losses per 1 million flights) was 0.11, which was the equivalent of one major accident for every 8.7 million flights. This was an improvement over the rate of 0.39 achieved in 2016 and better than the five-year rate (2012-2016) of 0.33
• There were 6 fatal accidents with 19 fatalities among passengers and crew. This compares with an average of 10.8 fatal accidents and approximately 315 fatalities per year in the previous five-year period (2012-2016). In 2016 there were 9 fatal accidents and 202 fatalities.
• None of the 6 fatal accidents involved a passenger jet. Five involved turboprop aircraft and one involved a cargo jet. The crash of the cargo jet also resulted in the deaths of 35 persons on the ground, as well as the crew of the jet.