I don't know about you, but I'm starting to get a little worried about air travel. It seems every day we turn on the news there's another botched job at the airport.
Look at all these examples from our own website:
Scary, right?
But are we experiencing some sort of uptick in airliner accidents, or are we simply witnessing more coverage of these accidents due to the way our media works?
Let's take a look:
Those 2025 numbers are now 63 and 31, respectively.
You'll notice that those numbers are consistent, if not lower than, numbers from previous years (though still there are more to add).
Let's now take a look at fatal crashes versus non-fatal crashes:
13 of the 94 accidents in 2025 have been fatal, which is just short of 14 percent.
In 2024, which was one of the better years for statistics in this category, there were 1,415 accidents, 257 of which were fatal. That comes out to just over 18%.
Translation: We're on track for a fairly normal year when it comes to aviation accidents.
Let's not forget here the D.C. crash on January 29, which killed 67 people. This was the first fatal crash of a commercial airliner in the U.S. in 15 years, and deserves to be noted here.
Moving on.
I'll quote now from another publication which used the same set of data I used above, but focused specifically on passenger flights:
So far, the plane crash at Toronto Pearson Airport is classified as an occurrence by the NTSB. It is one of seven aviation events that have occurred in January and February of 2025. That number is on pace to match the data from the past 20 years, which shows an average of 2.33 accidents per month and an average of 2.14 accidents for January and February.
In January alone, there were three aviation accidents, one that is unclassified in the data, one listed as a serious event and then one fatal event - the Jan. 29 crash in Washington, D.C., between an American Airlines plane and U.S. Army Black Hawk that killed 67 people.
…
Dr. Michael McCormick, a program coordinator and associate professor of air traffic management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, considers these as rare events that tend to get ‘larger than life attention' from the media and public.
‘These are singular, unique events that happen to be happening at a short period of time…there's no connectivity to them,' said McCormick.
So are we witnessing an abnormal year when it comes to aviation accidents?
I'll let you decide while I go book a flight to Puerto Vallarta!
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