by Donald Wood
Last updated: 10:19 AM ET, Tue January 2, 2018
According to Reuters.com, Dutch aviation consulting firm To70 and the Aviation Safety Network reported no commercial passenger airplane fatalities in 2017, making it the safest year for aviation ever.
To70 revealed the fatal accident rate for large commercial passenger journeys is down to just 0.06 per million flights, which translates to one fatal accident for every 16 million flights.
While the commercial aviation sector had a perfect year in terms of fatalities, there were still 10 fatal airliner accidents, including cargo planes and commercial passenger turbo-prop aircraft, which resulted in 44 deaths onboard and 35 on the ground.
In 2016, there were 16 registered airplane accidents and 303 deaths. The Aviation Safety Network said 2017 was "the safest year ever, both by the number of fatal accidents as well as in terms of fatalities."
It's also important to note that the study counted fatalities directly caused or related to the airlines themselves. It did not factor in deaths by natural cause while onboard an aircraft.
The latest numbers are part of a larger trend of aviation deaths steadily falling over the last two decades. For example, there were 1,015 deaths aboard commercial passenger flights worldwide in 2005, according to the Aviation Safety Network.
The last recorded fatal airline passenger jet crash in the United States occurred in February 2009 when Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashed in New York, killing 49 onboard and one person on the ground.
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