Air India plane crash makes 2025 deadliest for air travel in years
The crash of Air India Flight 171 has turned 2025 into one of the deadliest years in the past decade for civil aviation.
There were 242 people aboard the Boeing 787, according to the airline, when the
plane went down in a fireball on Thursday soon after taking off from Ahmedabad, India. The accident is likely to produce more fatalities given that it crashed into a residential area. There is only one known survivor.
Globally, the number of civil aviation fatalities has reached more than 460 in 2025, according to Jan-Arwed Richter, founder of Jacdec, a German consulting firm that tracks aviation safety. The average over the past decade is 284 based on the firm's methodology.
'This year still has more than six months to go, so this could be concerning if this rate of fatal accidents would go on,' Richter said.
Commercial aviation safety reached a high-water mark in 2023, when industry groups said there were no fatal crashes. Since then, a number of high-profile incidents have grabbed headlines.
02:40
Air India plane bound for London crashes moments after take off in Ahmedabad
Air India plane bound for London crashes moments after take off in Ahmedabad
In January, American Airlines Flight 5342 collided with an army helicopter near Washington, in one of the deadliest US civil aviation disasters in decades. Less than a month later, a Delta Air Lines jet flipped over while landing in Toronto, Canada.
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