Deadliest airplane accidents worldwide 2022, by number of fatalities

On March 27, 1977, two Boeing 747 planes, operated by Pan Am and by KLM, respectively, collided at the Tenerife North Airport. This became the deadliest airplane accident, with 583 fatalities. The crash of the plane operated by JAL, which happened in 1985, ranked second, with 520 fatalities. In January 2023, the aviation industry suffered a tragic incident in Nepal, where at least 68 people lost their lives.

Air transportation safety

Air travel is known for being a safe way to travel. In the past decades, air transportation safety has become a major priority, with the number of fatalities from commercial air travel accidents generally decreasing. However, safety means not only avoiding crashes, injuries, and fatalities but also scanning passengers and their baggage before boarding for security purposes. To ease and speed up this process, an array of new technologies have received funding, such as automated biometric identification systems.

Passenger airlines

Passenger airlines are airlines dedicated to the transport of human passengers either for leisure or business purposes. After a dramatic reduction in passenger aviation traffic due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the commercial airline market started growing again, with expected revenue of around 380 billion U.S. dollars in 2022. Among the largest airlines worldwide are Delta Air Line, American Airlines and United,, as well as the United Arab Emirates carrier Emirates. In 2022, Delta Air had the highest brand value of the leading airlines, standing at over seven billion U.S. dollars.