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2017 saw the safest year of commercial aviation on record

January 1st, 2018  |  Canadian Business

With zero deaths associated with commercial passenger jets, 2017 was named as the safest year of commercial air travel on record. The Dutch aviation consulting firm To70 and the Aviation Safety Network both reported on Monday there were no commercial passenger jet fatalities in 2017, and some interesting parties taking credit for this past year in aviation safety.

"2017 was the safest year for aviation ever," said Adrian Young of To70.

In a blog post on the To70 website, Young calculated that the that the fatal accident rate for large commercial passenger flights is 0.06 per million flights, or one fatal accident for every 16 million flights.

While the Aviation Safety Network also reported that there were zero commercial jet deaths last year, they did note that there were 10 fatal airliner accidents resulting in 44 fatalities onboard and 35 persons on the ground. The ASN went on to say that despite those numbers, 2017 was "the safest year ever, both by the number of fatal accidents as well as in terms of fatalities."

In comparison to the numbers of 2017, 2016 saw 16 accidents and 303 deaths in among various airliners. I can be noted that over the last two decades, aviation deaths around the world have been on a steady decline. According to the ASN, there were 1,015 deaths aboard commercial passenger flights worldwide in 2005.