Two major airline crashes towards the end of 2024 have caused major concerns about air passenger safety although flying still remains the safest mode of travel based on the number of flights and accidents recorded globally.
Nearly 180 people died after a plane crashed as it was landing in South Korea on the morning of December 29 last year.
Harrowing video footage shows the Jeju Air plane coming off the runway before colliding with a barrier and bursting into flames at Muan International Airport.
The plane, which was returning from Bangkok, Thailand, was carrying 181 people - 179 of whom were killed. Two crew members were rescued from the wreckage.
Four days prior to the South Korean air crash, on December 25, some 38 people died when an Azerbaijan Airlines flight, which had been due to land in Russia, crash-landed in Kazakhstan.
The circumstances around the crash still remain unclear, but evidence so far suggests it may have been damaged by missiles fired by a Russian air-defence system as it tried to land in Chechnya.
According to FlightGlobal, “There were 16 fatal accidents and 333 resulting fatalities last year, according to our reporting, compared with only six and 115, respectively, the previous year. That, however, is a misleading comparison because 2023 was the safest year in the history of the global commercial air transport industry.”
“The two major accidents last month hit the news media particularly hard because they both involved scheduled passenger jets, and the casualty numbers were high,” FlightGlobal noted.
This year marks 21 years of the IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA). In September 2003, Qatar Airways was the first to join the IOSA registry.
Today, more than 400 airlines are on the registry. It is the global standard for managing operational safety.
More importantly, it is clear that IOSA helps to improve safety. In 2022, IOSA registered carriers outperformed those not on the registry by a factor of four.
IOSA continues to be one of the hallmarks of IATA’s activities in the field of safety, having become the globally recognised standard for airline operational safety auditing since its inception 21 years ago.
It is being adapted into a risk-based audit by tailoring the audit activity to the operator’s profile and focusing on high-risk areas.
In addition to airlines, IOSA is also being used by numerous authorities in their regulatory safety programmes.
According to IATA, the global trade body of airlines, a strong safety culture within the aviation industry is essential for continuous improvement in all aspects of operations.
Creating an environment that encourages the transparent and timely reporting of incidents and accidents is essential to be able to identify systemic issues and prevent future occurrences.
IATA said it is actively working on two fronts to bolster this effort.
Following the Azerbaijan Airlines crash IATA’s Director General Willie Walsh noted, "“Civil aircraft must never be the intended or accidental target of military operations. The strong potential that Azerbaijan Airlines flight 8243 could have been the victim of military operations, as indicated by several governments including Russia and Azerbaijan, places the highest priority on conducting a thorough, transparent, and impartial investigation.
“The world eagerly awaits the required publication of the preliminary report within 30 days, in line with international obligations agreed in the Chicago Convention. And should the conclusion be that this tragedy was the responsibility of combatants, the perpetrators must be held accountable and brought to justice."
Aviation is incredibly safe around the globe based on the number of flights and accidents recorded. And the performance of the Middle East region’s carriers is no exception.
The goal must always be to improve. And at these very high levels of safety performance, the best way to improve performance is through detailed data analysis.
