Aircraft accident statistics provide a valuable source of information in order to set the right priorities as well as to monitor progresses made by the aeronautic industry. They are calculated for many kinds of aircraft. The accident statistics presented in this section apply to worldwide commercial jet airplanes that are heavier than 60,000 pounds maximum gross weight. However, airplanes manufactured in the former Soviet Union (CIS) are not included.

1. Air traffic growth

The air traffic has amazingly increased between the beginning of aviation and 2001. But after the World Trade Center attack, many airlines were in financial difficulty, and the air traffic started to decrease. Two years later, the growth came back.

In 2004, airplanes flied 34,1 million of flight hours. This number must be kept in mind for statistical analysis and failure rates interpretation: if an event has a probability to occur of 1 out of 1 million (which is rather low), it will occur several times a year. 

The following graph shows the total number of certified commercial jet airplanes that are heavier than 60,000 pounds maximum gross weight (it does not include airplanes manufactured in the former Soviet Union).

The number or aircraft ceaselessly increases to satisfy the growing transport demand. Fortunately, even if the airspaces are well congested, the risk of collision is very low thanks to the new technologies that make possible an accurate position and altitude measurements (which definitely help both crews and Air Traffic Controllers to prevent collision). For example, in order to accommodate all the traffic over some oceans, specific airspaces where aircraft are vertically separated by only 1000 ft were created. They are named RVSM airspaces, which stands for Reduced Vertical Separation Minima.

The hereabove graph shows that the average flight time also increases with years. Some state-of-the-art aircraft can perform 22-hours non-stop flights and cover half of the Earth distance without landing. These very long-haul aircraft becomes more and more numerous.