Worldwide Plane Crash Death Toll Doubles in 2005

Worldwide Plane Crash Death Toll Doubles in 2005
Posted: January 17th, 2006 10:00 AM EDT

PETER WOODMAN
PA Air Correspondent, Press Association Newsfile


The number of people killed in airliner crashes worldwide more than doubled last year.

The 34 fatal accidents involving passenger and freight planes in 2005 resulted in 1,050 deaths, statistics from Flight International magazine revealed.

This compared with 28 fatal accidents and 466 deaths in 2004, with the 2005 passenger and crew fatality figure the highest since 2000.

Flight International's operations and safety editor David Learmount said: ``Airline safety in 2005 took a step backwards in terms of the number of fatal accidents and resulting passenger and crew deaths.

``It was a disappointing 12 months given the outstanding safety performance in the previous two years.''

He added that a number of the fatal crashes last year involved airlines based in countries with ``mediocre or poor safety records'' compared with the rest of the world.

Also, the fatal accidents last year tended to involve older aircraft. In addition, none of the major world airlines suffered a fatal crash in 2005.

Nigeria had two fatal crashes last year in which a total of 225 people were killed, while Sudan saw three fatal accidents, all involving old Soviet-built aircraft.

The fatal accidents last year also included the West Caribbean Airways' crash in Venezuela in August which claimed the lives of 152 passengers and eight crew.

There was also severe loss of life in the Helios Airways' disaster when one of its Boeing 737s crashed into hills north of Athens in August, killing 115 passengers and six crew.

These are the crash and fatality figures for recent years for airliner flights worldwide:

YEAR FATAL CRASHES NUMBER OF DEATHS

1996 57 1,840

1997 51 1,306

1998 48 1,244

1999 48 730

2000 37 1,101

2001 33 778

2002 40 1,022

2003 27 702

2004 28 466

2005 34 1,050

I've found that when the industry is doing bad, that crashes and deaths are less frequent. Fewer flights being flown, the unseasoned staff laid off makes for the better people doing the job is a less time-stressed environment. No one rushing around trying to constantly get a million planes off the ground in shorter times.

Well the good news is none of the majors had any serious crashes that involved fatalities. If you consider the crashes of 05, most of them happened with third world or secondary airlines. What's happening however and most likely 06 will see an increase over 05 is that these third world countries are beginning to develop and as they do their populous will begin to travel. Without strict safety regulations and reliable maintenance these planes are going to go down. You can easily parallel this with the increase in air traffic in the U.S in the 50's, 60's, and 70's. As we took to the skies and large scale air travel was expanded we had our share of deadly accidents. It really wasn't until the last few years that technology and strong regulations have made the chances of a crash in the U.S a rare occurrence