Despite improvement, Africa’s accident second highest in 2019-IATA

• Eight fatal accidents, 240 fatalities registered

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has released data for the 2019 safety performance of the commercial airline industry showing continuing improvements in airline safety compared to 2018 and to the preceding five years.

All major 2019 safety performance indicators improved compared to 2018 and to the average of the 2014-2018.

According to the report, in 2019, it was 1.13 per cent or one accident every 884,000 flights compared 1.36 per cent or one accident every 733,000 flights in 2018, while total accidents recorded last year stands at 53 with eight fatal accidents claiming 240 lives compared to 62 recorded in 2018 which involved 11 fatal accidents with 523 fatalities.

Five regions showed improvement in 2019 compared to the previous five years (2014-2018) in terms of the jet hull loss rate.

Africa came second with 1.39 per cent jet hull loss rate in 2019 compared with 1.01 per cent in 2018 only to Commonwealth of Independent States comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan with jet hull loss of 2.21 in 2019 as against 1.08 it recorded previous year.

Europe made a great improvement with no accident recorded in 2019 compared with 0.13 per cent it registered in 2018.

Other regions with impeccable safety records are Latin America and the Caribbean which recorded 0.00 per cent in 2019 from 0.57 per cent previous year.

This is followed by Middle East and North Africa with 0.00 per cent accidents from 0.44 per cent in 2019.

North America registered 0.09 per cent accident per cent in 2019 compared with its record of 0.16 per cent followed by North Asia with 0.15 per cent accident rate in 2019 compared with its 0.00 per cent figure in 2018.

The clearing house for over 285 global airlines said all regions except for Latin America and the Caribbean showed improvement when compared to their respective five-year rates, adding that   accidents involving turboprop aircraft represented 41.5 per cent of all accidents in 2019 and 50 per cent of fatal accidents.

A turboprop engine is a turbine engine that drives an aircraft propeller. In its simplest form a turboprop consists of an intake, compressor, combustor, turbine, and a propelling nozzle.

In this category, Africa made 1.29 per cent improvement in 2019 from 5.20 per cent in 2018 while Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) have the worst safety record with turboprop aircraft with 15.79 per cent in 2019 from 16.85 previous year.

IATA stated that In 2019, the all accident rate for airlines on the IATA Operational Safety Audit (IOSA) registry was nearly two times better than that of non-IOSA airlines.

All IATA member airlines are required to maintain their IOSA registration. There are currently 439 airlines on the IOSA registry of which 139 are non-IATA members.

Wole Shadare