• A Jeju Air plane crashed on Sunday, killing 179 people. The CEO addressed reporters on Tuesday.
• Its CEO, Kim E-bae, outlined how the airline plans to regain trust after the catastrophic crash.
• He apologized, pledged compensation for victims, and announced scheduling changes focused on safety.

The CEO of Jeju Air addressed reporters on Tuesday, outlining how the airline plans to recover from the catastrophic crash that killed 179 people.

Kim E-bae announced measures he hoped would steady the firm in its deepest crisis, in the face of intense anger from victims' families.

Jeju's flight 7C2216 crash-landed on Sunday, hitting a barrier and bursting into flames after touching down without its landing gear.

All but two of the 181 people on board died, making it South Korea's worst-ever air disaster. The cause is still being investigated.

An airline in crisis

Jeju's shares tanked by 16% on the news, touching a record low on Monday. They rallied a little to close 8.7% lower before South Korean markets closed for the New Year.

Passengers began mass-canceling tickets, with at least 68,000 in a day.

On Tuesday, Kim held a press conference in Seoul and apologized, saying he knew Jeju had a huge task to regain fliers' trust.

The BBC covered and translated the press conference.

Kim gave some new information about Flight 7C2216, though he said the answer for why it crashed would have to wait for the formal investigation.

He said the pre-flight inspection of the Beong 737-800 showed nothing "abnormal" about the plane or the landing gear.

He also cited the airline's safety policies, saying all flights require sign-off from maintenance crews and that pilots are trained to high standards.

Full responsibility

He said Jeju would take full responsibility for addressing the disaster, a notable pledge since nobody has formally determined Jeju to be at fault.

Kim addressed the cancelations and said he knew they would continue until passengers had confidence in Jeju again.

He also said the airline would offer onsite support at Muan International Airport for the grieving families gathered there, and prepare an emergency compensation package.

He also said Jeju staff, too, would receive support to help them mourn their colleagues.

At an earlier press event on Sunday, Kim apologized for the disaster and said the company's top priority was to support the families, per BBC News.

Schedule changes, emphasis on safety

Kim said on Tuesday that Jeju would trim its schedules to give it more scope to focus on safety, decreasing air traffic by 10 to 15% until March.

Kim said the reduction did not mean Jeju was running too many planes beforehand.

Kim told reporters that even though Jeju Air has received the most fines of any Korean airline, its safety record improved over the years.

He said the airline increased its number of maintenance personnel since 2019.

Dodging questions

Kim avoided directly answering a question about the barrier near the end of the runway that the plane hit.

Safety experts have focused on it as a possible reason the crash was so deadly.

Todd Curtis, founder of Air Safe Media, told CNBC of the barrier: "Certainly that made it difficult to stop the aircraft safely."

It could take investigators weeks, months, or even longer to uncover the exact cause of the crash.

A team of US National Transportation Safety Board and Boeing officials are supporting the South Korean authorities with the investigation.

• Sunday's Jeju Air crash has again raised concerns about flight safety.
• Boeing's 737-800 model is used by nearly 200 airlines and has a strong safety record.
• The 737-800 is different from Boeing's 737 Max family, which has faced significant issues.

The Boeing plane that crashed in South Korea on Sunday, killing 179, has a remarkable safety record.

The 737-800 model is among the world's most widely used passenger planes, with some 4,400 in service for nearly 200 airlines, according to data from Cirium.

In its nearly 30 years of service, the 737 variant — much older than the problematic Max models —  has seen 1,100 fatalities from 17 accidents, according to data compiled by the Aviation Safety Network, a nonprofit research organization.

That's a relatively low crash rate, given the thousands of plane units produced and the millions of passenger flights completed. The model remains a backbone of global aviation.

"The 737-800 is a great airplane, the workhorse of the world, if you like," Airline News editor and aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas told Business Insider. "It is the most reliable aircraft out there."

Human error has contributed to most of the fatal 737-800 accidents.

Boeing 737-800 crashes

The first fatal crash involving the 737-800 was Brazil's Gol Airlines in 2006. The plane experienced a midair collision with a private jet and broke up, killing all 154 passengers and crew.

Investigators said errors by an air traffic controller and the private pilots were to blame.

Pilot error was a factor in several other 737-800 crashes, such as a 2007 Kenya Air flight, two Air India Express accidents in 2010 and 2020, and a 2016 Flydubai crash.

No US airline has experienced a fatal 737-800 crash, though some have been damaged due to things like mechanical issues, weather, bird strikes, and pilot error.

Some 737-800 accidents were due to other factors. In 2020, 176 people died after a Ukraine International Airlines flight was shot down by Iran.

In 2022, a China Eastern Airlines 737-800 nose-dived, killing 132, but the investigation is ongoing. A Wall Street Journal report that year said US officials had pointed to someone in the cockpit intentionally crashing the jet.

A China Airlines plane that crashed but suffered no fatalities in 2007 pointed to airline mechanic error and inadequate maintenance guidance from Boeing, Japanese investigators found.

Following the crash, the US Federal Aviation Administration instructed 737 operators in the US to ensure the maintenance component that caused the accident was properly installed.

Which airlines fly the 737-800?

The 737-800 is part of Boeing's "next generation" or "NG" line of planes, which also includes the smaller 737-600 and 737-700 and the larger 737-900.

The 737-800 first flew in 1998, and the model competes with the Airbus A320 narrowbody jetliner.

The NG planes were an upgrade to the classic 737 models with more range and fuel efficiency. The 737-800 can fly about 3,400 miles and carry up to 189 passengers, making it popular for short and medium-haul flying.

Cirium data shows commercial airlines operated the 737-800 on nearly 5.9 million flights in 2024. More than 6.2 million are scheduled through November 2025.

American Airlines is the biggest operator of the 737-800, with 303 in service, per Cirium. Irish budget carrier Ryanair and Southwest Airlines follow with 205 and 204, respectively.

US airlines Alaska Airlines, Avelo Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Sun Country Airlines, and United Airlines also operate the 737-800, but operators reach virtually every corner of the globe.

The Boeing 737-800 is not the same as the 737 Max

The 737-800 model does not have the same system that caused its successor, the 737 Max, to crash in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people.

That system, known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS, was blamed for the crashes.

Thanks to their more powerful and fuel-efficient engines, the Max 8 and Max 9 planes in service can fly about 500 miles further than the 737-800. The Max jets can also hold more passengers compared.

Boeing stopped producing the 737-800 in late 2019 when it replaced the NG family with the Max.

There are about 4,800 Max jets on backorder. Production resumed in December following a worker strike at its Washington factories.

• A Jeju Air plane crashed in South Korea, killing 179 of 181 on board.
• Investigators are considering the role of a bird strike in the crash.
• Bird strikes have not caused many plane losses, and experts say it may not be the only factor.

Bird strike is being considered as a possible cause of the plane crash in South Korea, which killed almost everyone on board.

Although colliding with birds has always been a risk of flying, it has brought down comparatively few modern aircraft.

Some experts said of the Sunday crash that a bird strike was unlikely to be the sole cause.

"A bird strike should be a survivable event," said Sonya Brown, an aerospace-design lecturer at the University of New South Wales, in an interview with The Guardian.

She said that planes are designed to cope with bird strikes. Engine-builders have long tested their designs by launching bird carcasses into running engines to ensure they keep working, as reported by this CNBC article from 2017.

A June report by the US Federal Aviation Administration said wildlife strikes on civilian and military aircraft have killed 491 people and destroyed some 350 aircraft globally between 1988 and 2023.

It said that in the US, 49 civil aircraft were lost because of birds in the period between 1990 and 2023.

Civil aircraft include both airliners and general aviation planes. The latter are more susceptible to damage because many are smaller, have less robust airframes, and single engines.

While that may sound a lot, it represents a tiny fraction of total losses over that period of more than 30 years.

There were more than 27,000 aircraft fatalities between 1988 and 2021, according to the Aviation Safety Network, putting bird strikes as a factor in fewer than 1.8% of deaths. Most of the deaths involve general aviation planes.

Bird strikes on passenger jetliners very rarely bring down an aircraft. The last time it happened in the US was the 2009 crash-landing of the "Miracle on the Hudson", where everyone survived.

Most of the time, bird strikes will cause damage to airlines, but pilots are safely able to land the plane. American Airlines, for example, suffered a bird strike over New York in December and circled back to the airport for an emergency landing, with no reported injuries.

The Jeju crash reason is still unknown

Investigators have yet to give a reason for the loss of the Jeju Air flight, a Boeing 737-800.

An official in South Korea's transport ministry official said the airport's control tower issued a bird strike warning before the crash, Reuters reported.

The fire chief at Muan International Airport, where the plane crashed, said in a televised briefing that an investigation will consider whether birds stuck the plane.

South Korea's acting president ordered an emergency inspection of the country's airline operations. And the government said it will audit all 101 of the country's 737-800s with US investigators.

But a bird strike is being considered as a cause, or a possible factor. And other issues have been reported, too.

Video footage showed that the plane landed without its landing gear deployed.

Keith Tonkin, the managing director of Aviation Projects, an aviation consulting company in Australia, previously told BI: "It appears that the aircraft wasn't configured for a normal landing — the landing gear wasn't down, and it looks like the wing flaps weren't extended either."

Commentators have also pointed to the design of the airport — the plane came to a hard stop when it hit a solid wall near the runway.

Jeff Guzzetti, a former accident investigator at the US's Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board, told The New York Times that plane crashes are typically the result of multiple factors at once.

This is known as the "Swiss Cheese Model" in aviation, a theory that says a string of multiple smaller errors often lead to an air accident.

"The aviation industry is built on redundancy, and there are very few single-point failures in airplane design or airplane operations," he said. "Typically, it's a combination of factors."

• A plane crashed at an airport in South Korea on Sunday, killing nearly all of its passengers.
• An aviation expert told BI that the pilots were possibly overwhelmed after a bird strike.
• South Korea has transformed its air travel industry from a 'pariah' to one of the world's safest.

A plane crashed in South Korea, killing nearly all on board and surprising an industry that has come to view the nation as one of the world's safest for air travel.

Flight 7C2216, a 15-year-old Boeing 737-800 operated by the Korean budget airline Jeju Air, crashed while landing at Muan International Airport just after 9 a.m. local time on Sunday. Of the 181 people on board, there were just two survivors, both crew members.

In recent years, South Korea has been considered among the safest for air travel, but it wasn't always that way.

"25 years ago, South Korea was a pariah in the aviation industry," Airline News editor and aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas told Business Insider. He said the nation's safety standards have since improved "dramatically."

Sunday's crash marks the first fatal accident for Jeju Air, founded in 2005 and named one of the best low-cost airlines in the world in 2024 by aviation ranking website AirlineRatings.com.

The airline was founded after decades of fatal crashes prompted the nation to rehabilitate its aviation safety culture.

Years of deadly crashes

South Korea had a decadeslong history of crashes due to pilot errors.

Before 2000, Korean Air and Asiana Airlines were the two main airlines operating in South Korea. In mid-December, Korean Air completed a $1.3 billion acquisition of Asiana Airlines, marking a new era in the country's aviation industry.

Korean Air — the country's flag carrier and its biggest — struggled with safety during the latter part of the 20th century. The airline had seven fatal passenger and cargo crashes between 1978 and 1999, according to data from the Aviation Safety Network.

Pilot error was cited as a contributing factor in each.

Some 75 passengers and crew, plus four people on the ground, died in 1989 when Korean Air Flight 803 crashed while attempting to land at Tripoli International Airport in Libya.

An Associated Press report published in 1990 said the Seoul Criminal Court sentenced the pilot, who cited poor visibility, to two years in prison for causing the crash.

One of the worst incidents happened in 1997 when Korean Air Flight 801 flew from Seoul to Guam. The Boeing 747 plane attempted to land at the A.B. Won Guam International Airport when it crashed, resulting in the deaths of over 200 passengers.

The National Transportation Safety Board published a report on Flight 801, which said the probable cause for the crash was the "captain's failure to adequately brief and execute" the approach, combined with the first officer and flight engineer's failure to monitor or challenge the captain.

Two fatal Korean cargo flights in 1999 also pointed to serious safety problems, including failed crew communication and cooperation.

Founded nearly 20 years after Korean Air, Asiana only had one fatal crash before 2000, when a Boeing 737 landed short of Mokpo's airport in South Korea in 1993. Reuters reported that an inquiry found that pilot error was the cause of the crash, which killed over 60 people.

The series of crashes made Korean Air a pariah in the aviation industry.

In 1999, Delta and Air France suspended their code-share partnerships with Korean Air, temporarily severing their airline alliances.

Around the same time, the US Department of Defense banned its employees from flying on Korean Air planes.

In 2001, the Federal Aviation Administration downgraded South Korea's safety rating, citing its failure to meet international standards — representing a particularly low point for the nation.

From unreliable to the gold standard

In the late 1990s, South Korea embarked on an effort to rehabilitate its air safety reputation. It hired a retired Delta executive to help overhaul training and hiring practices.

Investigations of several Korean Air crashes found that cultural issues in the cockpit — wherein first officers and flight engineers didn't communicate effectively with the captains or hesitated to challenge them — were partly to blame for the deadly accidents.

According to a 2006 report from The Wall Street Journal, the airline shored up its training by increasing shared responsibilities among pilots and reducing its hiring of Korean Air Force veterans who struggled to collaborate with others who they considered inferior in rank.

The cultural changes paid off in the years to come.

By 2002, Delta and Air France resumed their partnerships with Korean Air, and the FAA upgraded the airline's safety rating. Likewise, the US Department of Defense lifted the ban on employees flying on the airline.

By 2008, South Korea performed better than US airlines in the International Civil Aviation Organization's safety audit.

Korean Air is today considered among the world's safest airlines, and is part of the international SkyTeam Alliance — which requires strict high levels of safety to join.

"They certainly have cleaned up," Thomas, the editor from Airline News, told BI.

He added that Jeju Air had an "excellent" record since its founding and that the 737-800 is "the workhorse of the world."

"It is the most reliable aircraft out there, so everybody knows how it works," Thomas said.

In the case of Sunday's crash, Thomas said the pilots were likely overwhelmed as they were dealing with "a disaster."

"I think the issue is multiple bird strikes and then multiple failures resulting from that," Thomas said. "I would expect by the end of the week we will have critical information about exactly what went on, the multiple failures, and the cockpit discussion about what was going on."

But some information may not be immediately available to the public, he said.

"As a responsible country, any safety learnings from this would come out immediately so this information could be passed on to other operators of the 737 model of aircraft," Thomas said. "It may not necessarily be transmitted to the general public, but it would be transmitted to airline operators to alert them to a particular failure to check their own aircraft."

• A plane carrying 181 people crashed at an airport in South Korea on Sunday, killing 179.
• Photos and videos show the aircraft overrunning a runway before being engulfed in flames.
• It will likely take months or years to uncover why the plane crashed.

A commercial aircraft crashed at a South Korean airport on Sunday, killing 179 people.

Flight 7C2216, operated by the Korean budget airline Jeju Air, was carrying 181 passengers and crew when it tried to land at Muan International Airport at 9:03 a.m. local time but overran the runway.

A video broadcast by MBC News, a South Korean news network, showed the plane speeding down the runway, with smoke coming from its belly, before it crashed into what appeared to be a barrier and burst into flames.

The flight was traveling from Suvarnabhumi International Airport in Bangkok.

The aircraft was a 15-year-old Boeing 737-800 that Ryanair, a budget Irish airline, operated before it was delivered to Jeju Air in 2017, according to the Planespotters.net flight tracking website. It was not a Max variant, which has been embroiled in quality and production problems.

Video footage shows the aircraft landed without its landing gear deployed.

Airline News editor and aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas told Business Insider that a bird strike could have caused a mechanical issue on the plane.

"It's possible that the bird strike prevented the standard landing gear operation," he said. "It's possible, however, the pilots could crank the landing gear down manually."

"But if they had multiple failures related to the engines, then they probably didn't have time to do it, and therefore they simply made a belly-up landing on the runway because they had no options," Thomas added.

South Korea's transport ministry said on Sunday that it plans to conduct a safety inspection of all Boeing 737-800 aircraft in the country, per Yonhap News.

The Boeing 737-800 is a popular aircraft that is used widely around the world.

About 15% of the 28,000 passenger planes in service globally are Boeing 737-800s, The New York Times reported on Sunday, citing data it obtained from aviation data provider Cirium.

In a statement to BI, Boeing gave its condolences to families who lost loved ones and said it was in contact with and "ready to support" Jeju Air.

Spokespeople for Jeju Air did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement posted online, Jeju Air said it was "bowing" its head in apology and would investigate the crash.

A total of 179 people died, including 85 women, 84 men, and 10 others whose gender was not immediately identifiable. Two of the plane's six crew members survived and were conscious, according to local health officials. They were rescued from the tail section of the jet.

On Sunday, South Korea's land ministry said that it had identified 141 out of the 170 bodies, Yonhap News reported.

This is the first fatal crash involving a Jeju plane since the airline was founded in 2005. The last major aviation accident involving a South Korean airline was in 1997 when a Korean Air jet crashed in Guam, killing 228 people.

Reports of birds striking the aircraft

In a televised briefing, Lee Jeong-hyeon, chief of the Muan fire station, said that workers were investigating what caused the crash, including whether birds struck the aircraft.

"It appears that the aircraft wasn't configured for a normal landing — the landing gear wasn't down, and it looks like the wing flaps weren't extended either," Keith Tonkin, the managing director of Aviation Projects, an aviation consulting company in Australia, told BI.

The plane was almost completely destroyed, with the tail assembly the most intact part of the wreckage. After landing, the plane hit a wall, which Thomas said was within international standards, but the plane landed fast and far down the runway.

"The airport complied with international standards," he said. "The landing was anything but international standard."

Officials said that air traffic controllers warned about bird strike risks minutes before the incident, and a surviving crew member mentioned a bird strike after being rescued, The Guardian reported.

Thomas told BI that the pilots reported mayday shortly after air traffic controllers issued a bird strike warning. The pilots were then given permission to land on the opposite side of the runway.

Thomas said flight tracking was lost at about 900 feet, suggesting a possible electrical failure.

"I think that could well be one of the pivotal factors in this investigation as to why did it fail," he said. "What does that tell us about what was going on in the cockpit?"

South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reported that Muan International Airport has the highest rate of bird strike incidents among 14 airports nationwide.

Black boxes recovered, but one damaged

The Independent reported that transport ministry officials said they recovered the aircraft's two black boxes: the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder.

These provide investigators with information that helps string together the events before and during a crash.

However, Yonhap reported that officials said one of the black boxes, the flight data recorder, was partially damaged. The cockpit voice recorder — which will have information on what the crew said leading up to the crash — remained intact.

Air crash investigations can often take months or years to complete, meaning the cause of the crash likely won't be known for a long time. The damaged black box could further delay the investigation.

The investigation will be led by South Korea, where the crash occurred and Jeju was registered. The National Transportation Safety Board in the United States, where the Boeing jet was manufactured, along with Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration, will also be involved, the agency said in a post on X.

Crashes typically have more than one cause — known as the "Swiss Cheese Model" in aviation, a string of smaller errors often leads to an accident, not just one.

"The biggest risk is speculation because it obscures the actual causes of a near-miss, incident, or accident," Simon Bennett, an aviation safety expert at the University of Leicester in the UK, told BI.

"I appreciate that the relatives of the dead and injured will want answers. Understandably, they will want closure," he said. "However, rushing the investigation would do a huge disservice to the aviation community and airlines' customers."

The crash occurred amid a political crisis in South Korea and two days into the tenure of acting President Choi Sang-mok.

Choi took over from the country's previous acting president, Han Duck-soo, who was impeached two weeks after succeeding President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was himself impeached after trying to impose martial law.

• People in the back sections of two different plane crashes on Wednesday and Sunday survived.
• A 2015 study from Time Magazine found lower fatality rates in the rear section of aircraft.
• Pilot actions and the circumstances of the crash impact survivability across all seat areas.

Video footage of survivors emerging from the wreckage of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane crash on Wednesday, followed by two people surviving a Jeju Air crash on Sunday, showed it's possible to survive such catastrophic events.

29 people survived the Azerbaijan crash in Kazakhstan, and 38 people died. Two flight attendants seated in the tail section of the Jeju plane that crashed in South Korea lived, while the 179 others on board died.

CNN reported that emergency services said the tail section of the Jeju plane was the only piece somewhat intact after Sunday's accident.

The survivability of any plane crash largely depends on the circumstances of the accident. It's not yet known what caused the Azerbaijan or Jeju crashes or how any of the people on board either jet survived.

In general, however, seating arrangements and the actions of crew on board can contribute to survivability.

Specifically, seats in the rear of a plane — the section from which the Azerbaijan survivors were emerging and the location of the jumpseats the Jeju crew would have been sitting — are historically the safest, data shows.

Federal data analyzed by Time Magazine in 2015, which looked at 17 crashes between 1985 and 2000 that had both survivors and fatalities and seat maps available, found the back third of the aircraft had a fatality rate of 32%.

The rear middle seats had the lowest fatality rate at 28%.

That compares to the 39% fatality rate in the middle third section and the 38% fatality rate in the front third section. The study found the highest fatality rate was in the middle section aisle seats at 44%.

The report followed a 2007 analysis by the science and technology magazine Popular Mechanics.

It analyzed 20 crashes dating back to 1971 and found the survival rate in the aft, or rear, section was 69%, which is a 31% fatality rate. The middle section and front sections had survival rates of 56% and 49%, respectively.

The rear seats can experience less G-force

The back of the plane may be safer because, when a plane crashes, the front and middle sections often absorb much of the impact energy.

This can allow the back of the aircraft to remain more intact during head-on collisions with water or terrain, even if the rear portion separates from the plane.

The sole four people who survived a Japan Airlines crash in 1985 were seated in the aft section when the plane slammed into a mountainside. 520 others died.

A Delta Air Lines crash in 1985 in Texas saw 27 survivors, most of whom were seated in the back of the aircraft. The aft section broke free during impact.

In 2012, the Discovery Channel purposefully crashed an unmanned Boeing 727 into the desert with test dummies on board to analyze survivability.

They found that the middle and aft sections were the least fatal, with the front section experiencing 12 times the force of gravity. The middle and aft sections experienced a G-force of eight and six, respectively.

Crew actions can increase survivability

Pilot handling and cabin crew responses can also improve the chances of surviving a plane crash.

Azerbaijan Airlines president Samir Rzayev spoke about the pilots' "heroism" to reporters on Wednesday. Both died in the crash.

"While this tragic accident brought a significant loss to our nation, the crew's valiant dedication to their duties until the last moment and their prioritization of human life have immortalized their names in history," Rzayev said, according to the Report, an Azerbaijani news agency.

Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger is one of the more famous examples of pilots whose quick decision-making is credited with saving lives.

In 2009, Sullenberger's US Airways plane lost engine power over New York City. He responded by ditching the aircraft in the Hudson River because there were no runways in gliding range. All 155 passengers and crew survived.

Decades earlier, a United Airlines plane crashed in Iowa in 1989 due to an engine failure and subsequent hydraulics loss, meaning aircraft control was severely limited.

The pilots kept the landing gear down to absorb some of the crash shock and maintained relative control of the plane as it crashed. 184 of the 296 passengers and crew survived.

Flight attendants have also been credited for saving lives. During a fiery Japan Airlines runway collision in January, flight crews' quick response and communication were cited for the successful evacuation of all 379 people on board.

There is no universal safest seat

Federal authorities say there is no safest seat on a plane because every crash is different and depends on factors like how the plane impacted the ground and whether there was a fire.

Sully's water landing is an example of how the back of the plane could be most at risk after landing because it was taking on water with no exit doors available — so those passengers were among the last to exit.

In the United crash in Iowa, most of the survivors were in the rows behind first class but in front of the wings. They likely lived because of how the plane hit the ground and broke during landing, allowing people to more easily escape. Some people who did not perish on impact died due to smoke inhalation, an NTSB investigation found.

In 1977, a Pan Am and a KLM Boeing 747 collided in Tenerife, Spain, killing 583 people and becoming the world's deadliest plane crash. However, 61 people seated in the front section of the Pan Am plane survived.

The KLM jet hit the middle and aft sections of the Pan Am aircraft, causing the front of the Pan Am jet to be less severely damaged and allowing people to escape via an opening near the left wing.

Despite the different outcomes of the varying air crashes over the decades, flying is the safest mode of transportation — regardless of where you sit — thanks to strict safety laws and improvements in aircraft design.

A 2020 National Transportation Safety Board survivability report found that 1.3% of people involved in commercial airline accidents between 2001 and 2017 died, down from 4.7% between 1983 and 2000.