Airplane Accidents: Good News, Bad Timing

Few things are as terrifying as the thought of an airplane accident. Whether your imagination conjures images of a breached hull at 30,000 feet or a devastating crash that strews wreckage for miles, just the idea of being in an airplane accident is enough to keep thousands of people on the highways. Fear of flying is a very common fear.

The good news for those who do choose to fly, the International Air Transport Association has released their safety numbers for 2014, and the numbers are definitely improving in many ways. Highlights include:

• An overall accident rate of .23 per million, or only one accident per 4.4 million flights
• The number of accidents involving fatalities decreasing from 19 to 12
• A fatality rate of 200 per billion passengers

Though these numbers are good news, as it is always good news to hear the accident rate is declining, 2014 wasn’t entirely a success. Two major accidents led to an increase in deaths from an average of 517 over five years to 641 deaths last year. Though airline accidents were less common, they still occurred, and due to the very nature of giant aircraft thousands of feet in the air, each accident tends to be more devastating than a traffic accident. This good news came with bad timing. Just a week after the numbers were announced, a German airplane crashed into a mountain, killing everyone on board.

If you or someone you love has been injured or killed in an airline accident, it is up to you to keep things moving in a positive direction. Much of the progress in airplane safety has occurred because injured passengers took it upon themselves to force change onto the industry. Please contact an attorney to help you force the same types of changes that cut the airline accident rate last year.