Fatal Airliner Accidents

In the course of just one week, two commercial passenger airliners have crashed. On Sunday, February 11, 71 people lost their lives when an Antonov An-148 airliner crashed shortly after taking off in Moscow. Seven days later, on Sunday, February 18, 66 people were killed when an ATR-72 crashed an hour after leaving Teheran airport.

Though aviation safety standards have brought down the number of crashes per flight movement a great deal, crashes will never be eradicated. Most flights since the Second World War were lost in the United States, where the count now stands at 821 flights, according to the Aviation Safety Network's most recent figures.

However, aviation experts point out that the loss to fleet size ratio in Iran is high. This is also said to be due to the impact of economics sanctions which keep Iranian airlines from modernizing their fleet.