ASN: 2017 was civil aviation’s safest year

WASHINGTON — Last year was the safest year for civil aviation since plane crash statistics were first compiled in 1946, two industry studies have found.

President Donald Trump hailed the results on Tuesday, and credited his “very strict” stance on commercial aviation for the positive data in the United States.

A total of 10 crashes of civil passenger and cargo planes claimed 44 lives, said the Aviation Safety Network (ASN) in a statement published Monday.

“The year 2017 turned out to be the safest year ever for commercial aviation,” ASN said.

Five of the fatal accidents involved cargo flights and five passenger flights.

The previous year, ASN recorded 16 accidents and 303 lives lost.

No major airline crashed a plane, the To70 agency said in its annual report, also published Monday.

“The past year has been another exceptionally good year for civil aviation safety,” To70 said.

“2017 was much better than could reasonably ( and statistically) be expected, and was again better than last year’s remarkable performance,” said To70 researcher Adrian Young.

The chances of dying in a plane crash are now one in 16 million, Young said, making air travel the safest means of transport even as worldwide air traffic grew by 3% in 2017 over 2016.

The To70 report used data from the International Air Transport Association ( IATA) which is to issue its own annual report soon. —