Fatal accidents and airline fatalities hit an all-time low last year with safety up 100% compared to 15 years ago, according to experts Ascend.

The company, which claims to be the world’s principal provider of data, analytics and advisory services to investors in aerospace said that the number of fatal crashes in 2012 and the number of people killed in those crashes fell sharply compared with 2011. The fatal accident rate of one per 2.5m flights also made 2012 the safest year on record – and almost twice as safe as 2011, according to Ascend.

Its figures relating to airliner safety, show that there were 15 plane crashes involving deaths in 2012 compared with 25 last year, with the number of people sadly killed in fatal accident crashes this year totalling 362, compared with 403 last year.
Nearly three quarters of these deaths also resulted from two incidents last year.

[A total of 127 people were killed when a Bhoja Air Boeing 737 crashed near Islamabad airport in Pakistan on April 20. Then on June 6, a total of 153 people, plus 10 on the ground, died when a DANA Air plane crashed on approach to Lagos airport in Nigeria-Ed].

Ascend said the passenger death rate for the last five years was about one per 6.1m passengers carried, while for the period between 2000 to 2009 the rate was one per 3.7m and for the 1990s it was one per 1.8m. Insurance claims for the loss of airliners in 2012 were also around $980m, which is the lowest on record since 1991.

Paul Hayes, Head of Safety at Ascend, said: ‘’2012 does not represent a new norm for the world airlines. Nonetheless, airline fatal accident rates have been steadily improving and on average, operations are now twice as safe as they were 15 years ago. About 335 fewer passengers and crew were killed each year in the last decade than during the 1990s.’’