Data

Global aviation fatalities per million passengers

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What you should know about this indicator

  • Fatal accidents, hijacking incidents and numbers of fatalities are based on airliners of 14+ passengers, and do not include corporate jet and military transport accidents.
  • Information contained in the Aviation Safety Network database is based on information from official sources, such as authorities and safety boards.
Source
Aviation Safety Network (2024); Multiple sources compiled by World Bank (2024)processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
June 5, 2024
Date range
1970–2021
Unit
fatalities

Sources and processing

Aviation Safety Network – Accidents and fatalities per year

Retrieved on
June 5, 2024
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
The Flight Safety Foundation's Aviation Safety Network (ASN) - Accidents and fatalities per year (2024).
Retrieved on
June 5, 2024
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
The Flight Safety Foundation's Aviation Safety Network (ASN) - Accidents and fatalities per year (2024).

International Civil Aviation Organization (via World Bank) – World Development Indicators

The World Development Indicators (WDI) is the primary World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially-recognized international sources. It presents the most current and accurate global development data available, and includes national, regional and global estimates.

Retrieved on
May 20, 2024
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
World Bank's World Development Indicators (WDI).

The World Development Indicators (WDI) is the primary World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially-recognized international sources. It presents the most current and accurate global development data available, and includes national, regional and global estimates.

Retrieved on
May 20, 2024
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
World Bank's World Development Indicators (WDI).

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline
Notes on our processing step for this indicator
  • Calculated by dividing the number of fatalities, from the Aviation Safety Network, by the number of worldwide passengers, from the World Bank's World Development Indicators, and multiplying by 1,000,000.

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Global aviation fatalities per million passengers”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser (2021) - “Transport”. Data adapted from Aviation Safety Network, International Civil Aviation Organization (via World Bank). Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/aviation-fatalities-per-million-passengers.html [online resource] (archived on March 4, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Aviation Safety Network (2024); Multiple sources compiled by World Bank (2024) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

Aviation Safety Network (2024); Multiple sources compiled by World Bank (2024) – processed by Our World in Data. “Global aviation fatalities per million passengers” [dataset]. Aviation Safety Network, “Accidents and fatalities per year”; International Civil Aviation Organization (via World Bank), “World Development Indicators” [original data]. Retrieved April 1, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/aviation-fatalities-per-million-passengers.html (archived on March 4, 2026).

Quick download

Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.

Data API

Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.

Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/aviation-fatalities-per-million-passengers.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/aviation-fatalities-per-million-passengers.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/aviation-fatalities-per-million-passengers.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/aviation-fatalities-per-million-passengers.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/aviation-fatalities-per-million-passengers.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/aviation-fatalities-per-million-passengers.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/aviation-fatalities-per-million-passengers.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/aviation-fatalities-per-million-passengers.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear