Aviation safety is the study and practice of managing risks in aviation. This includes preventing aviation accidents and incidents through research, educating air travel personnel, passengers and the general public, as well as the design of aircraft and aviation infrastructure. The aviation industry is subject to significant regulation and oversight.
Aviation security is focused on protecting air travelers, aircraft and infrastructure from intentional harm or disruption, rather than unintentional mishaps.
In 1926 and 1927, there were a total of 24 fatal commercial airline crashes, a further 16 in 1928, and 51 in 1929 (killing 61 people), which remains the worst year on record at an accident rate of about 1 for every flown. Based on the current numbers flying, this would equate to 7,000 fatal incidents per year.
For the ten-year period 2002 to 2011, 0.6 fatal accidents happened per one million flights globally, 0.4 per million hours flown, 22.0 fatalities per one million flights or 12.7 per million hours flown.
From 310 million passengers in 1970, air transport had grown to 3,696 million in 2016, led by 823 million in the United States, then 488 million in China.
In 2016, there were 19 fatal accidents of civil airliners of more than 14 passengers, resulting in 325 fatalities, the second safest year ever after 2015 with 16 accidents and 2013 with 265 fatalities.
For planes heavier than 5.7 t, there were 34.9 million departures and 75 accidents worldwide with 7 of these fatal for 182 fatalities, the lowest since 2013 : fatalities per million departures.
In 2017, there were 10 fatal airliner accidents, resulting in 44 occupant fatalities and 35 persons on the ground: the safest year ever for commercial aviation, both by the number of fatal accidents as well as in fatalities.
By 2019, fatal accidents per million flights decreased 12 fold since 1970, from 6.35 to 0.51, and fatalities per trillion revenue passenger kilometre (RPK) decreased 81 fold from 3,218 to 40.
Runway safety represents % of accidents, ground safety % and loss of control in-flight %.
