The airline industry gets a lot of bad press, what with the occasional terrorist threat, security hassles and new fees for blankets and the like, but they deserve to get credit for when they’re doing things right. According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), an airline industry trade group, 2009 was the second safest year for Western-built jets since the group started keeping records in 1964.

The IATA reported a rate of only one accident per 1.4 million flights, meaning that statistically you could take a flight every single day and not get into an accident for 3,859 years. Only 2006 saw a safer year and since 2000 the accident rate has dropped 36%.

“Safety is the industry’s number one priority. Even in a decade during which airlines lost an average of US$5 billion per year, we still managed to improve our safety record. Last year, 2.3 billion people flew safely. But every fatality is a human tragedy that reminds us of the ultimate goal of zero accidents and zero fatalities,” said Giovanni Bisignani, IATA’s Director General and CEO.

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There is still room for improvement in certain key areas, however. Pilot handling was a contributing factor in 30% of all accidents, while runway incidents (called “excursions” by the industry) and ground damage accounted for 26% and 10% of all accidents respectively in 2009. The IATA has proposed a variety of safety programs to address these and other risk factors.

“Safety is a constant challenge. Having made aviation the safest way to travel, further improvements will come only with careful data analysis. We must understand the underlying safety risk trends, not just from the handful of accidents each year, but by bringing together and analyzing data from millions of safe flights.

The IATA Global Safety Information Center was launched in December 2009 for just that purpose.

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Going forward our goal is to work with other organizations and governments involved in aviation safety to add to the database and drive even more improvements,” said Bisignani.

Now if they could just do something about flight delays.