2007 Safest Year In Aviation For Nearly 50 Years

Despite huge growth in aviation and increased air traffic over the past few years, 2007 proved to be the safest year in aviation for over 40 years. In terms of air accidents, The Aircraft Crashes Record Office (ACRO) reports that 2007 was the safest year since 1963. Despite the fact that an accident is defined by ACRO as to be when an aircraft is damaged beyond repair and not in terms of fatalities, it is also notable that the number of lives lost in 2007 was 25% lower than in 2006 and It is also encouraging when taking into account the 3% increase in global passengers from 2006 to 2.2bn.

Of the 136 accidents reported in 2007, 33 were during scheduled commercial flights, 17 during charter flights and the remainder on services including cargo, ambulance, surveillance and humanitarian flights. ACRO Manager Ronan Hubert was encouraged by the progress,  “The most important thing to understand is people in aviation should take this opportunity to ensure aviation is a safe mode of transport. The CAA, operators, maintenance companies, pilots, all private companies involved – they have to take care of safety, and understand that if there are accidents operators won’t stay in business...They have to be very, very careful about safety or they’ll go bankrupt. All these people have taken this into consideration and today we can say the level of safety in developed countries is very high”.

Hubert added that the higher number of accidents in North America over Europe was down to a larger volume of aircraft and air traffic. A total of 34 incidents were reported in North America during 2007, whilst Europe experienced no major accidents. Of the 34 reported in North America, it is worth noting that most of the airplanes involved were light and mid-sized aircraft rather than jumbos. In fact most of the accidents worldwide involved a smaller type of aircraft.

The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has announced that its own report will be released in 2008 using data from a variety of different sources, with EASA Head of communications, Daniel Hoeltgen optimistic about the upcoming results, “Aviation safety in Europe is high – our 2006 report showed the lowest number of accidents involving fixed wing aircraft in public transport within the decade”.

However, Hoeltgen also warned that it was unacceptable to rest on their laurels, especially when positive results like these still reflect on a loss of human life, especially as future trends in aviation suggest there will be an increase in light jet traffic – of which most accidents have occurred. As a result, EASA have launched the European Strategic Safety Initiative, a voluntary drive which aims to increase cooperation between operators, authorities and manufacturers to exchange information that will enhance aviation safety on a global scale.