Fatal Airliner Accidents 2004-2024 / Fatalities by Airline 2014-2024

While the spate of crashes in late December 2024 might make it feel like traveling by air is becoming more dangerous, it’s still safer overall when looking at the historical long view.

In the first chart "Fatal Airliner Accidents", I track 21 years of airliner accidents that resulted in at least one fatality. Note that not all accidents are crashes. Some were emergencies that did not result in the loss of the aircraft, but did result in at least one loss of life. For example, the Singapore Airlines extreme turbulence flight in May 2024 landed safely but one passenger died from their injuries. 

In the second chart "Fatalities by Airline", I used the same data as above but for the last 11 years only, showing fatalities by airline. Some of these airlines had more than one accident (Malaysia Airlines, Pakistan International Airlines, Tara Air, TransAsia Airways). The data shows the total for each airline in time period 2014-2024.

Methodology for both: I am showing only scheduled passenger flights operated by airlines. This includes commercial jets and turboprop airplanes with 14 or more passenger seats. These are all flights that anybody could book online for travel. I looked at the data from the Aviation Safety Network and filtered for “Passenged Scheduled” flights on airplanes with 14 or more seats with at least 1 fatality resulting from their emergency.

These charts do not include the following flights: non-scheduled passenger flights (chartered planes, air taxis), military, cargo, business/corporate jets, private/general aviation, training, air ambulance, ferry/positioning, surveying, or fire-fighting aircraft. Fatality count does not include any ground fatalities. 

Note: The Aviation Safety Network, the only organization that tracks all flight emergencies worldwide into a single database, categorized the December 24, 2024 crash of Azerbaijan Airlines as “Unlawful Interference” and not an Accident “per ICAO Annex 13 definition.” I am including it as an accident because it was a scheduled passenger commercial flight operated by an airline whose crash landing resulted in fatalities.