2006 safest year ever in the air
MONTREAL: Flying may be safer than ever in commercial jets but in Russia and Africa your chances of being involved in an accident are greater than anywhere else in the world.
New statistics from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) show that 2006 was the safest year on record.
Giovanni Bisignani, IATA’s director general and CEO said that air transport remained the safest form of travel.
“But we must do even better. With demand for air travel increasing at 5-6 per cent per year, the accident rate must decrease just to keep the actual number of accidents in check.
“The goal will always be zero accidents. And the interim target is to reduce the industry rate to 0.49 accidents per million flights in 2008—a 25 per cent improvement,” said Bisigani.
The 2006 industry hull loss rate was 0.65 accidents per million flights for Western-built jets, which is equivalent to one accident for every 1.5 million flights—a 14 per cent improvement on 2005.
IATA’s member airlines performed significantly better than the global average with a hull-loss rate of 0.48 accidents per million flights, or one accident for every two million flights.
There were 77 accidents in 2006, compared to 111 in 2005. Of these 77 accidents, 46 involved jet aircraft and 31 involved turbo-props.
IATA’s Safety Report shows Russia and other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) had the highest accident rate of all the regions in 2006, with 8.6 Western-built hull losses per million flights—13 times the global average.
In Africa, despite improvements, the accident rate remains the second highest in the world at 4.31 accidents per million flights.
The IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) is a condition of IATA membership. It is the airline industry’s first globally accepted audit programme using internationally harmonised standards.
All IATA airlines must complete an audit by the end of 2007 and close all findings by the end of 2008 to maintain membership.
Currently 144 airlines are on the IOSA registry, including 121 IATA members.
Contributing factors to accidents included adverse weather (43 per cent); communication, either between pilots or air traffic controllers (38 per cent) and flight crew training (33 per cent).
Issues to be addressed by IATA are:
1. Runway safety: Runway safety-related issues resulted in several serious incidents in 2006, including the only fatal passenger accident to occur in North America.
2. Ground damage: Overall, 10 per cent of the year’s accidents took place on the ground, injuring people and costing US$4 billion in damaged equipment.
3. Cargo: Approximately 76 per cent of all accidents involved passenger aircraft, compared to 24 per cent for cargo aircraft. This is disproportionate with cargo’s four per cent of global operations. To help address this issue, standards for cargo operators have been incorporated into the IOSA programme.
Ian Jarrett
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