The air transport industry has come a long way since 1947, when Flight Safety Foundation was founded officially. Commercial jet-powered aircraft were only preliminary designs, and the accident rates were high. If the world had the same accident rate now, given the vast increase in traffic, there would be several hundred serious air transport accidents a year. Certainly, one or two would occur every day somewhere around the world.

Safety has been improved dramatically, and today the air transport industry has a very low accident rate, compared with other modes of mass transportation. Nevertheless, with the increase in traffic, unless that rate declines further, we risk an ever-increasing number of accidents, along with the possible loss of public confidence that any major accident could cause.

In 1959, the first full year of commercial jet transport operation, the world’s scheduled air carriers averaged 100,000 jet flying hours per hull loss; today, they average nearly 800,000 flying hours per hull loss. This record varies by world region, with Australasian air carriers averaging more than 3 million flying hours per hull loss and North American air carriers averaging about 2 million flying hours per hull loss. Operators in other areas of the world — South America, Central Africa and Asia — average about 350,000 flying hours per hull loss.

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