OREANDA-NEWS  The number of accidents involving civil aircraft in Russia in 2023 turned out to be the lowest since at least 2014, according to a report by the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC).

In total, last year, according to the report, 21 air accidents were recorded, including 11 disasters with the death of 20 people.

The most air accidents in the last 10 years occurred in 2016 - 52 events, including 23 disasters that claimed the lives of 59 people. The anti-record for the number of deaths was recorded in 2018 - 128 people.

These figures do not take into account events "related to acts of unlawful interference in the activities of civil aviation," the document clarifies. It also lacks a relative indicator of flight safety in the Russian Federation - the number of accidents per 1 million departures.

According to the Ministry of Transport at the end of March this year, 1,285 thousand aircraft were operated in the Russian Federation, 1,160 thousand of them were passenger. The number of flights they made last year was not reported.

In all 12 countries participating in the interstate agreement on civil aviation (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine), 26 air accidents were recorded last year. According to the IAC, this is 1.5 times less than in 2022, and in general is the best indicator since 2006. At the same time, it is necessary to take into account "a significant decrease in the number of flights in 2023 due to the closure of some international destinations and airports in a number of states parties to the agreement," the authors of the report draw attention to. It is also noted that there was no improvement in other flight safety indicators last year relative to the previous one: there were also 15 disasters, and the death toll increased to 31 from 28.

The total number of air accidents in 12 countries last year includes 14 events in commercial aviation, including 9 disasters with the death of 22 people, and 12 in general aviation (AON), including 6 disasters with 9 victims. The report says that it is not possible to assess the relative safety indicators of AON flights - without taking into account these data, the number of accidents per 1 million departures in 2023 was 11.5, catastrophes - 7.4. The first indicator was the best since 2019, the second "practically does not change and is in the range of indicators for a five-year period."

There were no accidents with aircraft with a take-off weight of more than 5.7 thousand kg in the airlines of the states parties to the agreement in 2023. There were 7 of them with light and ultralight vessels (including 3 catastrophes with the death of 5 people), 7 with helicopters (including 6 catastrophes, 17 people died), the rest of the cases fall on the AON. According to the IAC's preliminary assessment, about 80% of all air accidents are caused by the "human factor".