Flying Fatalities Are Extremely Rare

Investigations into the cause of last week’s deadly Air India plane crash are currently underway, with the cockpit voice recorder in the plane’s second black box having now been recovered. All but one of the 242 people aboard the Air India AI171 flight bound for London Gatwick on June 12 were killed soon after it took off from India’s northwestern city of Ahmedabad. At least 29 people on the ground also perished as the plane crashed into the campus of a medical college. Trainee doctors and students who were there at the time rushed to save their colleagues.

The plane in question was a Boeing 787 and despite the heavy scrutiny Boeing has come under in the past year for the safety issues of its other planes, last week’s Air India crash marks a first for this specific model.

Data published by the World Bank and Our World in Data shows that while these disasters do happen, they are extremely rare and commercial aviation has become far safer over the decades. In 2023, there were 0.03 fatalities per million passengers, or in other words, three deaths per 100 million. According to this data, 2023 was the second safest year since records began, following only after 2017 when 0.01 deaths per million passengers were recorded.