January 2nd - 2023 was the safest year ever for passenger aviation
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 2 January 2024
⏱️ 5 minutes
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Summary
The saddest part of my job as a travel correspondent is to write about tragedies, which includes airline accident. But compared with previous years, the tragedies have been about three times under the average of the last ten years. It is a remarkable to the people who do all they can to ensure we're safe as airline pasengers
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The saddest part of my job as a travel correspondent is to write about tragedies, and of course that includes airline crashes. |
| 0:14.9 | However, 2023 turns out to have been an astonishingly safe year, with a record low in terms of fatal accidents |
| 0:27.5 | involving commercial passenger flights, just two, and in the number of fatalities, totaling |
| 0:35.0 | 86, each of them, of course course a dreadful human tragedy but compared with previous years |
| 0:43.9 | that is a record it is about three times better than the average over the past ten years which |
| 0:53.4 | itself is extraordinarily safe. |
| 0:56.9 | I will just mention the circumstances of those two crashes. |
| 1:00.6 | They were both propeller planes on domestic flights. |
| 1:03.3 | The first one on the 15th of January, 2023, involved a Yeti Airlines aircraft flying from Kathmandu to Pokhara and about a mile short |
| 1:13.6 | at the runway. |
| 1:15.0 | The pilots inadvertently feathered the propellers which effectively means they are providing |
| 1:20.6 | no forward power and the aircraft stalled and crashed into a gorge with the loss of all 72 people on board. |
| 1:30.9 | The other crash happened on the 16th of September last year and that was of Manawas |
| 1:38.3 | Airlines actually a passenger charter going to the town of Barcelona and it crashed in bad weather |
| 1:46.7 | and all 14 people on board lost their lives. But no passenger jet aircraft which covers |
| 1:55.8 | everything from small commuter jets of the kind that fly in and out of London City Airport to the Airbus A380 |
| 2:03.2 | Super Jumbo. No passenger jets were involved in fatal accidents. No international flights were involved |
| 2:10.3 | in fatal accidents in 2023. It is a remarkable tribute to the women and men who obsessively do all they can to ensure our safety as airline passengers. |
| 2:26.6 | The comparison between now and the start of their jumbo jet age in 1970 is simply unbelievable the way that air safety has just removed all |
| 2:40.7 | the possible risks it can from flying and that I think is reflected in these remarkable |
| 2:49.1 | statistics for 2023 aviation safety is all about learning from |
| 2:55.7 | the last accident and actually the author of the air safety review that I've been reading. |
... |
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