Our World
in Data
Oxford Martin School logoUniversity of Oxford logoGlobal Change Data Lab logo
Data

Global aviation fatalities per million passengers

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

This data is based on the following sources

Aviation Safety Network – Accidents and fatalities per year

Retrieved on
June 5, 2024
Retrieved from
https://aviation-safety.net/statistics/
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
Retrieved from
https://aviation-safety.net/statistics/
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
Retrieved from
https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0037712/World-Development-Indicators
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
Retrieved from
https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0037712/World-Development-Indicators
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).

How we process data at Our World in Data

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.

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

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/20260417-112857/grapher/aviation-fatalities-per-million-passengers.html [online resource] (archived on April 17, 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 17, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260417-112857/grapher/aviation-fatalities-per-million-passengers.html (archived on April 17, 2026).

Download

Quick download

You can download the visualization as an image or download the chart data.