2017 Was the Safest-Ever Year to Fly

It’s the rare year during which no one dies in a commercial jet airline crash. For whatever reasons, 2017 was such a year.

That made 2017 the safest year ever for commercial aviation, both in terms of accidents and fatalities.

There were aviation-related fatalities during the year, however, when incidents involving cargo and propeller-driven aircraft are considered.

According to the Aviation Safety Network, there were 10 fatal airliner accidents during 2017, resulting in 44 pilot and passenger deaths. Five of the accidents involved cargo planes, five were small passenger planes.

There was a notable pattern to the accidents: four of the 10 crashes, accounting for 25 of the 44 fatalities, involved some variant of the Cessna 208 single-engine turboprop planes; and two of the 10 downed planes, accounting for eight deaths, were Let L-410UVP-E20s, the twin-engine turboprop produced by Czech company LET Kunovice.

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The worst of the year’s accidents was the NatureAir crash on Punta Islita, Costa Rica, resulting in 12 fatalities. That, ironically, was on December 31, New Year’s eve.

Reader Reality Check

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After 20 years working in the travel industry, and 15 years writing about it, Tim Winship knows a thing or two about travel. Follow him on Twitter @twinship.

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