by Donald Wood
Last updated: 7:00 PM ET, Mon February 15, 2016
PHOTO: Dulles Airport crash in August 2015. (via Twitter)
On Monday, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) released the 2015 safety performance data for the commercial airline industry, which showed a drastic drop in airline accidents over the last year.
According to the official website of IATA, there were 136 deaths as a result of four accidental airline crashes in 2015, as compared to 641 fatalities in 2014. The Germanwings 9525 and Metrojet 9268 crashes did not count toward this year's total as they were deemed as deliberate acts of unlawful interference.
In terms of hull losses per one million flights, the 2015 accident rate was 0.32, which equals one major accident for every 3.1 million flights. This is a 30 percent improvement over the previous five-year rate of 0.46.
Overall, more than 3.5 billion passengers safely flew on 37.6 million flights in 2015, and there were only 68 accidents for all types of aircrafts, down from 77 the previous year. In total, there were only four fatal accidents all last year, meaning only six percent of accidents resulted in a death, a huge drop from the five-year average of 19.6 percent.
IATA Director General and CEO Tony Tyler released a statement about the safety results:
"2015 was another year of contrasts when it comes to aviation's safety performance. In terms of the number of fatal accidents, it was an extraordinarily safe year. And the long-term trend data show us that flying is getting even safer. Yet we were all shocked and horrified by two deliberate acts--the destruction of Germanwings 9525 and Metrojet 9268. While there are no easy solutions to the mental health and security issues that were exposed in these tragedies, aviation continues to work to minimize the risk that such events will happen again."
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