Last year sees more serious air accidents

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 yesterday.

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.