“Safety improvement is a marathon with no finish line,” says Gilberto Lopez Meyer, IATA senior vice president of Safety and flight operations.

The year 2018 demonstrated a worse aviation safety performance than 2017, with 32 accidents and 301 fatalities on board recorded in the first half of the year – thus, excluding Lion Air crash. According to Meyer, another six incidents and 216 deaths happened in the second part of the year, putting the death toll at around 500 in 2018.  

Nevertheless, but is still a huge safety improvement when compared with 10 years ago. The accident rate increased in half of IATA regions, however, Africa and CIS countries stand out the most. Despite the fact that accident rate in these two regions are falling the most, they still remain well above world average.