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African flights are least safe
08/05/2008 21:38 - (SA)
Pretoria - It is still six times less safe to fly in Africa than the rest of the world, the annual safety report released by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) on Thursday showed.
The report illustrated that the 2007 global accident rate of 0.75 hull-losses for every million flights by Western-built jet aircraft was slightly higher than the 0.65 rate recorded in 2006.
This was largely the result of accidents in Africa, Indonesia and to some extent Brazil.
Africa had the worst record at 4.09 hull-losses per million flights.
IATA describes a hull loss as an accident in which the aircraft was destroyed or substantially damaged beyond repair.
Global fatalaties declined
The number of global fatalities declined 19% from 855 to 692, even as passenger numbers increased by 6% to over 2.2 billion passengers in 2007.
There were 100 accidents in 2007 compared with 77 accidents in 2006.
Air travel 'safest'
However IATA said Air travel was the safest mode of transportation.
"In the ten years from 1998, the accident rate was reduced by almost half from 1.34 accidents per million flights to 0.75. And the number of fatalities dropped significantly in 2007," said Giovanni Bisignani, IATA's Director General and CEO.
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