Record year for airliner safety

This year has been the safest yet for air travel, according to figures out yesterday.

The number of fatal crashes in 2012 and the number of people killed in those crashes fell sharply compared with 2011.

The fatal accident rate of one per 2.5 million flights made 2012 the safest year on record and almost twice as safe as 2011, flight advisory service Ascend said.

The figures, which relate to airliner safety, showed that there were 15 plane crashes involving deaths in 2012 compared with 25 last year.

The number of people killed this year was 362 compared with 403 last year.

Nearly three quarters of the deaths came in two incidents this year. A total of 127 people was killed when a Bhoja Air Boeing 737 crashed near Islamabad airport in Pakistan on 20 April.

On 6 June, 153 people, plus ten on the ground, died when a DANA Air plane crashed at Lagos airport in Nigeria.