Airline safety: Still getting better?

Abstract

We consider worldwide aviation safety on scheduled passenger flights over the years 2018–22, distinguishing the 34 weeks during the Covid-19 pandemic from the prior 26 weeks. Although the pandemic caused convulsions in airline operations, it caused no deviation from the trend under which global passenger death risk from accidents and deliberate acts dropped by about 7% per year. The nations of the world continued to differ substantially in passenger mortality risk, though nations in the previous “intermediate risk” category performed slightly better than those in the earlier “lowest risk” group. The difference, however, fell far short of statistical significance. Consistent with the previous pattern, passenger death risk in the “higher risk” nations was more than an order of magnitude higher than that in other nations. The transmission of Covid-19 aboard commercial flights may have taken thousands of lives worldwide over 3/20-12/22, which would have considerably exceeded passenger deaths over that period caused by accidents and deliberate attacks. However, this increase could be considered a transient effect if the pandemic is essentially over as of the mid-2020's.