Family members of victims from the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crash hold photographs during a vigil outside the Department of Transportation in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, Sept., 10, 2019. Two crashes within five months — Lion Air Flight 610 in October 2018 off the coast of Indonesia and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in March outside Addis Ababa — killed 346 people and led to a global grounding of Boeing Co.’s 737 Max jets. Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg… More
© 2019 BLOOMBERG FINANCE LP
Mercifully, 2019 is finally over. Was it a “good year” or a “bad year” in terms of commercial aircraft fatalities?
Such over-simplifications are absurd. One fatality is too many.
Still, the media is already rushing to proclaim 2019 a good year, with “fatalities falling by more than 50%.” The 287 fatalities on commercial aircraft in 2019 (planes certified to carry 14 or more) are indeed about half the 561 reported in 2018 by the Accident Safety Network. (Different sources report slightly different numbers, but the overall near-50% drop is consistent.)
Of the 287 fatalities, more than half were caused by a single accident, the Ethiopian Airline Boeing 737 MAX crash that killed 156. The Ethiopian Airlines crash, the second accident involving the new plane, has also created a loss of confidence in Boeing, both from the industry as a whole and from inside the company. “The sharp reduction in fatalities compared to 2018 is — at the risk of sounding macabre — due to the grounding of the 737 MAX in March,,” said Jan-Arwed Richter, the head of Germany’s Jet Airliner Crash Data Evaluation Center.
Another area of concern is that the number of fatal accidents went up to 20 in 2019, up more than 30% from the five-year average of 14. And surprisingly, more than half of the accidents (11) occurred in North America.
Still, worldwide there were about 39 million flightsin 2019. hath works out to just one fatal accident per every two million flights.
But both 2018 and 2019 saw considerably more fatalities than 2017. In 2017, there were just 59 deaths attributed to airline accidents, making it safest year ever. Unfortunately, 2017 is starting to look like the statistical outlier.
The decline from 561 deaths in 2018 to 287 in 2019 may have thankfully reversed the 900% increase in fatalities from 2017 to 2018. But the 2019 death toll was still almost 500% higher than that of 2017.
Clearly, the number one safety question going into 2020 is the uncertain status of the Boeing 737 MAX. Boeing has the unenviable distinction of involvement in the highest fatality crash of 2019. The March 10 Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX crash killed all 157 on board. That followed a Lion Air 737 MAX crash in Indonesia in October, 2018, that killed 186.
A grounded Lion Air Boeing Co. 737 Max 8 aircraft sits on the tarmac at terminal 1 of Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Cenkareng, Indonesia, on Tuesday, March 15, 2019. Sunday’s loss of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737, in which 157 people died, bore similarities to the Oct. 29 crash of another Boeing 737 Max plane, operated by Indonesia’s Lion Air, stoking concern that a feature meant to make the upgraded Max safer than earlier planes has actually made it harder to fly. Photographer: Dimas Ardian/Bloomberg… More
© 2019 BLOOMBERG FINANCE LP
Over 400 737 MAX aircraft have been parked since March, 2019 when the FAA issued an order grounding them (among the last world regulatory bodies to do so.) Even if Boeing’s fixes to the MAX are approved by the FAA and other world aviation bodies soon, American Airlines has the 737 MAX off its flight schedule until April 7,
The 737 MAX investigations and questions around a return to service date are enormous and multi-faceted. The crisis has led to the demotion and eventual firing of Boeing CEO Muilenburg, questions about how much “broad oversight of its own work” the FAA allowed Boeing, lawsuits from the families of victims as well as airlines, pilots and potentially flight attendants, and a stock decline, among other issues.
Aviation Safety Network’s CEO Harro Ranter stated that “2020 should be a decisive year on how the international aviation industry will handle aircraft design, flight crew procedures and certification in the wake of the 4th longest airliner grounding.”
But while the 737 MAX crashes and Boeing’s response to it were clearly the major aviation safety story of 2019, it was not the only one. Unfortunately, lack of transparency and international cooperation does not help improve aviation safety.
In January 2019, an aging Iranian Boeing 707, crashed, killing 15. The pilots apparently confused the runway of one airport with that of another, realized their error and failed in an effort to pull up. A similar error several weeks earlier had resulted in a narrow escape, but the problem was reportedlynever reported to the Iranian Aviation Organization. This follows a February 2018 ATR crash in Iran’s mountains that killed 66 people. Iran’s Aseman Airlines was told by Iranian officials to ground its ATR aircraft. The crash was apparently caused by wing icing, but a final report has still not been completed.
MOSCOW REGION, RUSSIA MAY 6, 2019: An Aeroflot Sukhoi Superjet-100 (SSJ100) passenger aircraft (registration RA-89098) taken off a runway after a crash landing at the Sheremetyevo International Airport; the airliner left Sheremetyevo for Murmansk on May 5 at around 6pm Moscow time, returned and made an emergency landing at around 6.40pm due to a fire aboard; the crash landing and the fire resulted in multiple casualties. Sergei Fadeichev/TASS (Photo by Sergei Fadeichev\TASS via Getty Images)… More
SERGEI FADEICHEV/TASS
On the other hand, some are saying authorities have rushed to judgment in an accident in May 2019 involving an Aeroflot Superjet 100 at Moscow Airport that killed 41. Charges such as “infringement of flight procedures and manuals, resulting in excessive vertical speeds during final approach and too high of an angle of attack at touchdown” were reportedly filed against the pilot before the investigation was even completed. More than half the 78 people on board died, and it was reportedsome passengers delayed the evacuation by attempting to take carry-on luggage out of the overhead compartments,.Southwest until April13.
