The number of air disaster victims increased in 2020
The Kiev-bound Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737 crashed shortly after taking off from Tehran on January 8 AFP / File
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Despite the health crisis and the fall in air traffic, the number of deaths in air disasters increased in 2020. This is what a study by the Dutch consulting company To70 reveals.
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Due to the health crisis, air traffic plummeted by more than 61% in 2020. As a result, two times fewer commercial flight accidents were to be deplored compared to the previous year: 40 against 86. The victims were on the other hand, were more numerous: 299 against 257.
According to the count from the Dutch aviation consultancy firm To70, the bulk of these people were killed in the first months of the year.
One hundred and seventy-six of them died in the
crash of the Ukraine International Airlines Boeing
, which was shot down by an Iranian missile in January.
Ninety-six others died in
the crash of an Airbus A320
that crashed in Pakistan in May.
The severity of these two tragedies drove the rate of fatal accidents per million commercial flights from 0.18 in 2019 to 0.27 in 2020, or one fatal accident for every 3.7 million flights.
For 20 years, this rate has been falling steadily.
According to the Aviation Safety Network, a website that lists all aviation accidents, the number of fatalities in civil aviation was 1,015 in 2005, three times more than today.
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Aeronautics
Transport