Despite high-profile disasters, air safety steadily improves
Yet a strong case can be made that airline safety — at least in terms of mechanical failures and human error — is better than ever, even as investigators try to learn why an EgyptAir jetliner crashed into the Mediterranean Sea on Thursday with 66 people aboard.
In 2014, according to IATA, there were 12 fatal airline accidents, with 641 fatalities, including the still-unsolved case of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared from radar over the Gulf of Thailand with 239 people on board.
Including that incident, which IATA does not classify as an accident, the overall air disaster death toll for 2014 was 939.
Airlines for America, the lobbying group for most U.S. carriers, predicts that 231.1 million passengers will fly in June, July and August — a 3.8-percent increase over last summer's record numbers.