2014 hasn’t been a good year for air travel.
With AirAsia Flight QZ-8501 going missing over Indonesian waters on Sunday morning, more people might reconsider flying.
Four major air disasters this year--which includes Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, TransAsia Airways Flight 222, and Air Algérie Flight 5017--have resulted in 701 deaths. If AirAsia did crash, that number will jump to 862 deaths. As of early Sunday morning, a rescue effort was still underway to find the plane.
Ascend’s head of safety, Paul Hayes, told Bloomberg News several months ago that despite the grim statistics, “It’s important to look at the long term trends. What looks likes a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ year - let alone just seven months - by itself means nothing.”
According to the European Aviation Safety Agency, there were 224 air crash deaths in 2013, compared with a yearly average of 703 deaths between 2003 and 2012. However, according to another report from the group, it appears the numbers have dipped since the start of 2011, with less than 400 deaths each year since then until 2014.
To put this in perspective, it was common two decades ago for worldwide aviation deaths to top 1,000 per year. The worst crash year on record was 1972, with 2,429 deaths.
Airline pilot Patrick Smith, who wrote “Cockpit Confidential,” noted that regarding 2014’s rate, “[these disasters are] very unusual.”
“The [air travel] accident rate has been consistently falling, and that is fatalities per miles flown. There are just more and more airplanes flying, so in some respects it stands to reason we'll see more accidents. ... There are going to be spikes in some years, but the overall trend has been safer and safer and I feel that will probably continue,” he told Business Insider.
Here’s the most high-profile crashes this year:
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370:
Flight 370 disappeared presumably over the Indian Ocean as it was traveling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The plane had 239 people on board but it has never been found after it disappeared March 8.
Currently, Australian and Malaysian ships are searching through a portion of the southern Indian Ocean hundreds of miles from Perth, Australia.
There’s been a number of theories as to why the plane went missing--some of which are outlandish.
It’s expected to be found sometime next year.
