2012 safest year since 1945

[Vev]

What a great headline ... I wish we could say the same for light aircraft.

 

Just one of the lessons here about reducing deaths has come from more transparency, proactivity and cooperation ... may be we could all benefit from more timely release of information regarding RAA accidents, so that, we as individuals, can at least improve awareness and take steps to make our flying safer.

 

Cheers

 

Vev

 

 

2012 the safest year for flying since 1945

 

Flying on a commercial jetliner has never been safer. Yesterday marked four years since the most recent fatal crash in the United States, a span unmatched there since propeller planes gave way to the jet age more than half a century ago. Worldwide, last year was the safest since 1945, with 23 deadly accidents and 475 fatalities, according to the Aviation Safety Network, an accident researcher. That was fewer than half the 1,147 deaths in 42 crashes in the year 2000. In the last five years, the death risk for passengers in the US has been one in 45 million flights, according to professor of statistics Arnold Barnett at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There are many reasons for this. Planes and engines have become more reliable. Advanced navigation and warning technology has sharply reduced once-common accidents such as mid-air collisions or crashes into mountains in poor visibility. Regulators, pilots and airlines now share much more information about flying hazards, with the goal of preventing accidents rather than just reacting to them. And when crashes do occur, passengers are now more likely to survive. "The lessons of accidents used to be written in blood, where you had to have an accident, and you had to kill people to change procedures, or policy, or training," said Deborah Hersman, the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). "That's not the case anymore. We have a much more pro-active approach to safety." The grounding of the Boeing 787 fleet last month illustrates this new era of caution. The last time a fleet was grounded was 1979, after a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 crashed shortly after take-off at O'Hare Airport in Chicago, killing 273 people. The 787s, by contrast, were grounded after two episodes involving smoking batteries in which no one was hurt and no planes were lost. [NYT] [The Straits Times] [The Business Times]