Serious global jet accident rate rose in 2007, IATA says

NEW YORK -- Deadly crashes in Brazil, Indonesia and Africa last year led to the first global uptick in serious jetliner accidents in a decade, an international aviation trade group said Thursday.

However, the overall number of deaths from flying declined, to 692 last year from 855 a year earlier, according to the annual safety report by the International Air Transport Association. Passenger traffic was up 6 percent during the same period, the Geneva-based organization said.

Fewer than one in a million flights involving Western-built jets ended with an accident that destroyed or severely damaged the plane. But the rise in this so-called hull-loss rate -- to 0.75 accidents out of a million flights in 2007, from 0.65 in 2006 -- is the first increase in the serious accident rate since 1998, when it stood at 1.4 crashes per million flights.

Western-built jets, such as those made by Boeing Co. or Airbus, are by far the most common passenger planes in the world. IATA figures suggest they account for about 85 percent of global traffic.

IATA counted a total of 100 accidents involving jet and turboprop planes in 2007, up from 77 accidents a year earlier.

North America, Europe, and the countries of the former Soviet Union had the lowest accident rates last year. Africa had the worst record, with a hull-loss rate of 4.09 per one million flights.

"While this is an improvement over last year, it is still six times less safe to fly in Africa than the rest of the world," IATA Director General and Chief Executive Giovanni Bisignani said in a statement.

A July 17 crash in which a Tam Linhas Aereas SA jetliner slammed into a building in Sao Paulo, Brazil, was the deadliest single accident of 2007, according to a report released earlier this year by the independent Aircraft Crashes Record Office, also based in Geneva. That accident killed 199 people.