Global airline safety performance has improved in all regions this year, except Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries, according to IATA.
“As of the end of November, the global safety performance is at the best-ever level recorded, and [western-built hull losses] is 49% better than the same time last year,” IATA SVP-safety, operations and infrastructure Gunther Matschnigg told reporters in Geneva.
IATA said that 12% of all accidents involved western-built hull losses, of which there were nine in the first 11 months of this year, compared to 17 last year. Measured by the number of hull losses per million sectors, the rate is 0.34 so far this year, versus 0.67 in the year-ago period (ATW Daily News, Feb. 24).
There were no western-built jet hull losses in Europe and North Asia. Accident rates have improved in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, Asia Pacific and Africa while the safety rate in North America remained flat. However, the CIS had more western-built jet hull losses than in 2010.
The CIS is also the notable exception when analyzing the total accident rates covering eastern and western jet and turboprop aircraft.
Matschnigg said, “The overall global accident rate [first 11 months] is [22%] better than last year and it is better in all regions, except for the CIS. There the accident rate is 55% worse than last year, with 11.07 hull losses per million departures versus 7.15 last year.”
The overall global rate this year is 2.16 compared to 2.78 in 2010. In 2011, there were 75 accidents through Nov. 30 compared to 92 in the year-ago period.The number of fatalities also fell markedly, from 784 in the first 11 months of 2010 to 486 through Nov. 30 this year. Fatal accidents stand at 22.
African carriers have made impressive improvements in safety this year, he noted. In 2011, the accident rate fell 63% to 6.34 per million flights compared to 17.11 last year. The accident rate of western-built jets on the continent was 3.93 per million sectors, up by more than 50%, while African IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA)-registered carriers have had no accidents so far this year.
Globally, IOSA carriers had an accident rate of 55% in the first 11 months of the year, better than those not on the registry. “This 55% difference clearly indicates that IOSA is largely contributing to lower the accident rate around the world,”Matschnigg said. He also said that Russian aviation authorities had agreed to require IOSA for its commercial airlines as of next year.
IOSA carriers represent 22% of all commercial carriers globally and 63% of all commercial flights.
Credit: Cathy Buyck, Air Transport World
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