The number of people killed in large commercial plane crashes fell by more than 50 percent last year, despite a high-profile Boeing 737 MAX crash in Ethiopia in March, a Dutch consulting firm said on Wednesday.
Aviation consulting firm To70 said that there were 86 accidents involving large commercial planes — including eight fatal incidents — resulting in 257 fatalities last year.
In 2018, there were 160 accidents, including 13 fatal, resulting in 534 deaths, the firm said.
The firm said that the fatal accident rate for large planes in commercial passenger air transport was just 0.18 fatal accidents per 1 million flights last year, or an average of one fatal accident every 5.58 million flights, a significant improvement over the previous year.
The fatality numbers included passengers, air crew and any people on the ground killed in a plane accident, the firm said.
The large passenger planes in the study are aircraft used by nearly all travelers on airlines worldwide, but exclude small commuter planes, including the Cessna Caravan and some smaller turboprops, the firm said.
Boeing’s board on Monday last week said that it had fired chief executive Dennis Muilenburg after a pair of fatal crashes involving the 737 MAX forced it to announce it was halting output of its best-selling jetliner.
The 737 MAX has been grounded since March after an October 2018 crash in Indonesia and the crash of a MAX in Ethiopia.
To70 said that the aviation industry last year spent significant effort “focusing on so-called ‘future threats,’ such as drones,” but the MAX crashes were “a reminder that we need to retain our focus on the basics that make civil aviation so safe: well-designed and well-built aircraft, flown by fully informed and well-trained crews.”
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