2024 was a deadly year for air travel, but flying is still the safest form of transport

06.01.2025 - 04:23 / euronews.com / Joanna Bailey

2024 has fanned the flames of worries over flying, particularly in recent weeks, when more than 200 people lost their lives in two separate incidents just days apart.

Thirty-eight people died when an Azerbaijan Airlines plane crashed in Kazakhstan; four days later, 179 perished when a Jeju Air flight crash landed in South Korea.

While recent events are still ringing in the minds of many, 2024 was a year of disasters in aviation. In early January, a fiery crash in Tokyo shocked the world, leaving five members of the Japan Coast Guard dead, although passengers on the Japan Airlines plane escaped safely.

Days later, part of a plane fell off when it was departing from Portland, Oregon, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the fuselage. Again, all 177 passengers survived the emergency landing, but the fallout from the event has seen major manufacturer Boeing in the spotlight all year.

During the summer the tragic loss of a Voepass flight in Brazil claimed the lives of 62 passengers and crew.

On top of this, multiple reports of aircraft hitting severe turbulence and injuring people, including one fatality on a Singapore Airlines flight, have given travellers cause to worry about their safety.

According to the Aviation Safety Network, a total of 318 people died in aircraft accidents last year, making 2024 the deadliest year in aviation since 2018.

But is flying really becoming less safe, and should we be worried if we’ve got an upcoming trip booked?

Dr Hassan Shahidi, president and CEO of Flight Safety Foundation, a non-profit involved in all aspects of aviation safety, put things in perspective for Euronews Travel.

“In all of 2023, there were zero commercial jet fatalities,” he says. “By the time 2024 was over, the aviation industry had transported 5 billion passengers worldwide. And until just the past few days, 2024 was poised to repeat that safety record.”

According to research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), flying is safer today than ever.

In the 2018-2022 period, the risk of dying through air travel was calculated to be 1 per every 13.7 million passenger boardings. That’s down from 1 per 7.9 million boardings in 2008-2017 and a major decrease from the 1 per every 350,000 boardings in 1968 to 1977.

Research from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical Academy has shown that up to 80 per cent of aviation accidents can be attributed to human error. A mistake on the pilots’ part is thought to account for 53 per cent of accidents, while mechanical failure was considered to be at fault in just 21 per cent of cases.

Airbus studied which part of the flight was most dangerous, and found that takeoff and landing were when accidents were most likely to occur. Both of the two December 2024 crashes happened when