Western jets have lowest crash rate in history

[Feuer Frei!]

AIRLINES flying Western-built aircraft had the lowest crash rate in history in 2010, with just one accident for every 1.6 million flights, the International Air Transport Association said on Wednesday. However, worldwide figures showed both more accidents than the previous year and a jump in the number of fatalities.
Overall in 2010, 786 people were killed in 23 fatal accidents, up from the 685 who perished the year before. In total, there were 94 accidents compared with 90 in 2009.
Compared to a decade ago, the accident rate has been cut 42 percent.
Overall 2.4 billion people flew safely on 36.8 million flights, IATA said.
The association pointed to marked regional differences in aviation safety.
The safest regions were North America, with a rate of 0.10 hull losses per million flights, Europe (0.45), North Asia (0.34) and Russia, with no aviation accidents in the year.
The Asia-Pacific region had a higher accident rate than the global average at 0.80 in 2010, while the Middle East and North Africa region saw their accident rate fall significantly to 0.72, from 3.32 in 2009.
Latin America and the Caribbean reported a higher rate of 1.87 with four airlines from the region involved in accidents.
Africa had a rate of 7.41, which was lower than the 2009 level of 9.94 but still by far the worst rate in the world.
Of the global total, the most common cause of accidents, at 21 percent, was aircraft overshooting the runway on takeoff or landing - with wet runways being a factor in more than one third of accidents.

Some interesting stats.

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