It has been a bad few days for aviation safety.

Yesterday two people died when a plane crashed at Marana Regional Airport in Arizona. On Monday, a flight from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Pearson Airport in Toronto flipped on the runway, bursting into flames as it smashed into the tarmac. Thankfully, all 80 people onboard survived.

At the end of last month a commercial jet crashed into a military helicopter in Washington D.C., claiming the lives of 67 people as both crafts plunged into the icy water of a river below.

In the US, the horrifying incidents have led to a dip in confidence in the safety of air travel. A survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed that 64% of American adults now say plane travel is “very safe” or “somewhat safe”, which is down from 71% last year. About 2 in 10 U.S. adults now say air transportation is very or somewhat unsafe, up from 12% in 2024.

Global data on the number of plane crashes that have occurred in 2025 is difficult to come by, as most national authorities do not publish their figures immediately. However, stats from the US’s National Transportation Safety Board show that there have been 87 aviation accidents recorded in the US in 2025 so far, with 62 incidents in January and 25 in February. A total of 13 of these accidents have been fatal, with 10 occurring in January and three in February.

There have been four major, fatal aviation disasters in the US occurring within just two weeks of each other – in Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Alaska, and Arizona.

While it may feel as if air travel is getting more dangerous, the data suggest that it isn’t. In the US at least. Last month, there was a record-low number of airplane accidents across the US when private and commercial airline flight incidents were combined. Most of the 62 total airplane accidents were on private flights, and that total number was 18 less than the 80 recorded in January 2024.

Unless those numbers are surprisingly updated, January 2025 will surpass the previous record for the lowest number of total accidents, bringing the previous record low of 70 crashes down to 62.

Marco Chan, senior lecturer in aviation operations at Buckinghamshire New University’s School of Aviation and Security, was asked whether flying is getting more dangerous. He told Sky News while that last year “wasn’t a particularly great year for safety”, the global plane accident rate is still only around 1.3 per one million flights. He didn’t comment on the incidents this year.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) estimate that between 2018 and 2022 the fatality rate on commercial planes was one per 13.7 million passengers. This means plane deaths are far lower than they were between 2008 and 2017, when there was roughly one death for every 7.9 million boardings. Between 1968 and 1977, one passenger in every 350,000 died.

The high profile nature of the crashes this year, coupled with the fact that global aviation is growing – meaning more plane crashes may take place while the per-flight safety numbers may improve – may give the impression that flying is becoming more dangerous.

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