For folks wondering if flying is suddenly unsafe, I have some stats from 2024 for you to think about. There were 1,170 aviation accidents last year. That includes all types of aviation even kitplanes, hot air balloons, gliders, etc. For you aviation types, these are not incidents, but accidents. /1 - ThreadSky

chasingray.bsky.social • 15 days ago

For folks wondering if flying is suddenly unsafe, I have some stats from 2024 for you to think about.

There were 1,170 aviation accidents last year. That includes all types of aviation even kitplanes, hot air balloons, gliders, etc. For you aviation types, these are not incidents, but accidents. /1

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chasingray.bsky.social•15 days ago

There were 179 fatality accidents in 2024. These are individual accidents in which a fatality occurred, not the total number of fatalities.

There were at least 303 fatalities last year. (I'm locked out of a few accidents, so don't have fatal numbers on those. Assume around 310 for the year.) /2

chasingray.bsky.social•15 days ago

These crashes occurred in all types of flying: personal, skydiving, training, agricultural, air ambulance, corporate, commercial charter & commuter, sightseeing, hot air ballooning, etc. Two people were killed while "eradicating coyotes" in MT and two were killed while hauling fuel in AK. /3

chasingray.bsky.social•15 days ago

Most flights were single pilot/occupant crashes. There were several with 4 and 5 passengers; the worst loss of life was seven passengers in WY last summer. Two pilots died in a commercial training flight in Honolulu in Dec - I doubt most folks in the Lower 48 heard about it. /4

chasingray.bsky.social•15 days ago

The Potomac midair was an exceptional accident and we already have a very good idea of some of what was at least indirectly involved in causing it (congested multi-use airspace with a long history of near misses whose operations were impacted by political decision-making). /5

chasingray.bsky.social•15 days ago

The last time we had such a horrific aircraft accident was 2009 with Colgan Air. That year there were also 267 other fatality accidents. By that metric alone you can see that flying has become safer.

But right now the media is hyper focusing on aviation accidents, so everyone's nervous. /6

chasingray.bsky.social•15 days ago

The thing to remember is that every accident happens for a very specific set of reasons and what caused a landing gear failure on a privately owned jet in AZ has nothing do with the midair in DC or the commuter crash in AK or the medevac accident in PA. It's just that you KNOW about them all. /7

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