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How often do planes crash?
In this article, you’ll learn about:
… and so much more.
Let’s dig in.
Let’s look at the different statistics of your chances of a plane crash.
The average commercial flight is 3 hours long.
And for every 100,000 commercial flight hours, there are 2.32 deaths from plane crashes.
That means for every 33,333 flights, there are 2.32 deaths.
There are 5,670 American commercial flights per day.
So, every 5.87 days, there are 2.32 deaths from plane crashes.
Or, every 2.53 days, there is 1 death from a plane crash in the US.
The chances of a plane crashing are very small.
The odds of being in a plane crash are 1 in 11,000,000 flights.
Airlines do inspections between every flight to ensure there are no mechanical malfunctions.
And air traffic controllers track weather to make sure flights avoid bad weather.
Pilots go through rigorous training.
Even with this, though, pilot errors are the leading cause of plane crashes.
But, your chances of being in a plane crash are 1 in 11 million, which is very small.
This is the average number of plane crashes over the past 30 years.
In the US, there is an average of 1,662 plane crashes per year.
Globally, there are 6,392 plane crashes per year, on average.
But, this is only talking about the number of plane crashes per year.
It’s not talking about how many plane crashes lead to death per year.
The number of plane crashes per year that lead to someone’s death is:
But, if you’re looking at the past 10 years, then there are:
On average, the number of planes that crash per year decreases by 5.53% a year.
This information comes from the:
0.000131% of planes crash in the US.
On average there are:
Divide the number of crashes by the number of flights to find what percentage of planes crash.
1 out of every 763,985 planes crash.
This chart shows the number of plane crashes per year.
This includes commercial and private airplanes.
Notice how the number of plane crashes has trended down over the past 30 years.
There is a 5.53% per year decline in the number of plane crashes.
| Year | Total Accidents | Total Fatal Accidents |
|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 1,837 | 345 |
| 2001 | 1,728 | 326 |
| 2002 | 1,716 | 345 |
| 2003 | 1,741 | 352 |
| 2004 | 1,619 | 314 |
| 2005 | 1,671 | 321 |
| 2006 | 1,523 | 308 |
| 2007 | 1,654 | 288 |
| 2008 | 1,569 | 277 |
| 2009 | 1,481 | 276 |
| 2010 | 1,441 | 271 |
| 2011 | 1,471 | 270 |
| 2012 | 1,471 | 273 |
| 2013 | 1,223 | 221 |
| 2014 | 1,222 | 255 |
| 2015 | 1,211 | 230 |
| 2016 | 1,269 | 213 |
| 2017 | 1,234 | 203 |
| 2018 | 1,275 | 224 |
| 2019 | 1,220 | 233 |
| 2020 | 1,085 | 205 |
How often do planes crash?
4.4 planes crash per day in the US.
17.1 planes crash per day globally.
We got this information from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
We know that there are:
We can find the average for how often a plane crashes by dividing those numbers by 365 days.
So, what causes these planes to crash?
Here is what causes plane crashes by percentages:
Human error is the leading cause of plane crashes.
No, turbulence cannot crash a plane.
Turbulence is not strong enough to cause structural damage.
Turbulence can cause damage to the plane, but not structurally.
These damages are not enough to cause a plane to crash.
These plane crash statistics look at the following to gather statistics:
Air travel is the safest mode of transportation.
This is particularly true if you are using commercial airline flights.
Most airplane accidents are from private plane crashes.
Airline accident rates are very minimal and hard to even calculate.
The crew members go through pre-flight checklists to ensure aviation safety.
And air traffic control safely directs flights to avoid collisions.
The odds of a plane crash are 0.07 aviation accidents per 1,000,000 flights.
This data is from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) for commercial airlines.
The odds of a non-commercial plane crash is 0.36 plane crashes per 100,000 flight hours.
This is the global rate of general aviation aircraft crashes.
General aviation is any aircraft operation that is not conducted by:
General aviation includes operating aircraft for:
Your chances of dying in a plane crash are 0.0000191%.
1 out of every 5,236,888 people dies in a plane crash.
There are 44,945 flights per day in the US.
The average flight holds about 175 passengers.
That means that 7,865,375 people fly per day in the US.
Per year, 2.87 billion people fly per year.
(Obviously, there is some overlap from people flying multiple times per year.)
On average, 548.2 people die per year from commercial flights in the US.
That means that your chances of dying are 0.0000191%.
We divided the number of people that die by the number of people that fly per year.
Over the past 30 years, an average of 548.2 people die per year from plane crashes.
There has been a 5.64% per year in airplane-related deaths over that 30-year period.
On Average, 7,865,375 people fly per day in the US.
There are 44,945 flights per day in the US.
The average flight holds about 175 passengers.
The average commercial flight holds 150 – 200 passengers.
Some mega planes hold up to 500+ passengers like:
But, we’re looking at averages for commercial aviation.
The number of people that fly per day ranges between 6,741,750 and 8,989,000.
This is looking at the:
There are:
| Global Plane Crashes | US Plane Crashes | |
|---|---|---|
| Per Day | 17.1 | 4.4 |
| Per Week | 119.6 | 31.1 |
| Per Month | 512.7 | 133.3 |
| Per Year | 6,238 | 1,622 |
Let’s look at how many planes crash per day in the US.
There are 1,622 plane crashes per year, which comes out to be:
Let’s look at how many planes crash per day globally.
There are 6,238 plane crashes per year, which comes out to be:
The risk of dying in a car crash is 1 in 5,000.
Meaning that for every 5,000 people driving, there is one that is going to die.
You have a 0.02% chance of dying in a car crash.
The risk of dying in a plane crash is 1 in 11,000,000.
Meaning that for every 11,000,000 people flying, there is one that is going to die.
You have a 0.000009% chance of dying in a plane crash.
You are 220,000% more likely to die in a car crash than in a plane crash.
According to the US Department of Transportation, the fatality rate for:
Your chance of dying is 1,686% higher in a car than in a commercial airline.
Commercial planes have to get certified by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Without these strict regulations to ensure the plane is safe, they cannot fly.
Planes get designed:
Planes get equipped with safety features like:
Your chances of dying on a plane are 0.0000191%.
1 out of every 5,236,888 people dies on a plane.
95.7% of people survive airplane crashes globally.
Out of every 100 people involved in a plane crash, 95.7 people survive.
This data is from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
The safest part of a plane is the rear cabin.
The rear cabin is:
The rear cabin is reinforced because it’s where the engines are attached.
For the shell of the cabin to hold the wings and engine, it has to be reinforced.
The rear of the cabin is also closer to the plane’s center of gravity.
This makes it more resistant to the effects of turbulence.
Commercial airplane crashes are rare but still happen often.
Since 2020, dozens of commercial planes have wrecked.
And hundreds of lives have been lost to these crashes.
The leading cause of commercial airplane crashes are:
Aviation authorities have implemented strict safety protocols.
These have reduced plane crashes by roughly 5.3% per year over the past 20 years.
There are 12.8 commercial plane crashes per year in the US.
There are 28.3 commercial plane crashes per year globally.
| Year | Global Commercial Plane Crashes | US Commercial Plane Crashes |
|---|---|---|
| 2001 | 41 | 19 |
| 2002 | 34 | 17 |
| 2003 | 51 | 17 |
| 2004 | 23 | 16 |
| 2005 | 34 | 14 |
| 2006 | 26 | 11 |
| 2007 | 26 | 15 |
| 2008 | 19 | 15 |
| 2009 | 26 | 14 |
| 2010 | 28 | 10 |
| 2011 | 29 | 6 |
| 2012 | 23 | 11 |
| 2013 | 18 | 16 |
| 2014 | 29 | 12 |
| 2015 | 27 | 16 |
| 2016 | 26 | 11 |
| 2017 | 30 | 10 |
| 2018 | 28 | 5 |
| 2019 | 36 | 12 |
| 2020 | 11 | 3 |
There is a commercial plane crash every 16.7 million flights.
For every 1,000,000 flights, 0.06 planes crash.
That tells us that for every 16.7 million flights, there is one commercial plane crash.
Boeing 737s have been involved in several major crashes.
There have been 4 fatal crashes in the past 20 years with a Boeing 737.
These 4 Boeing 737s crashing led to 590 fatalities.
For reference, there were roughly 10,000 Boeing 737s in operation in those 20 years.
That means that 0.04% of Boeing 737s will be in a crash.
0.04 Boeing 737s crash for every 100 that are in commercial airline use.
Let’s look at the airlines with the most crashes.
The top 5 airlines with the most crashes:
And the number of deaths for the airlines with the most crashes are:
The airlines with the most crashes in history are:
The KLM Royal Dutch Airlines have never had a crash.
They are the longest-running airline, too.
They were founded in the Netherlands in 1919.
We pulled data from the:
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