Global commercial aviation recorded fewer accidents and fewer fatal accidents in 2025, even as the number of fatalities rose by 30.7% to its highest level in five years. ICAO’s latest figures underline the need to distinguish between accident frequency and severity, while presenting a more nuanced safety picture for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Global passenger traffic continued to expand in 2025. Airlines carried approximately 4.95 billion passengers, up 9.3% from 4.53 billion in 2024, according to the 2026 edition of the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Safety Report. Scheduled commercial operations generated 38.08 million departures, a 2.7% increase year on year.
The rise in activity was not accompanied by an equivalent increase in accidents. ICAO recorded 85 accidents involving scheduled commercial operations by aircraft with a maximum take-off mass above 5,700 kilograms, compared with 95 in 2024. The global accident rate consequently fell from 2.56 to 2.23 accidents per million departures, a decline of 12.9%.
Fatal accidents also decreased sharply, from ten in 2024 to four in 2025. Yet those four events resulted in 387 fatalities, up from 296 a year earlier. The figures reveal a central tension in the latest safety assessment: aviation recorded fewer accidents, but the human consequences of the most serious events became heavier.
Traffic grew while the accident rate declined
Measured by accident frequency, 2025 represented an improvement over the previous year.
The number of accidents fell by 10.5%, while the fatal accident rate decreased from 0.27 to 0.11 per million departures. Passenger traffic moved above its pre-pandemic level, although the number of departures remained 1.8% below the 38.79 million recorded in 2019.
These indicators matter because a simple comparison of annual accident totals does not take changes in traffic into account. As more passengers travel and more flights operate, rates provide a clearer measure of exposure than absolute numbers alone.
ICAO’s five-year data nevertheless show that safety performance can vary significantly from one year to another. The number of accidents rose from 48 in 2021 to 95 in 2024 before declining to 85 in 2025. Fatal accidents moved from four in 2021 to seven in 2022, one in 2023, ten in 2024 and four in 2025.
The fatality trend followed a different path. Deaths fell to 72 in 2023, increased to 296 in 2024 and reached 387 in 2025. The fatality rate rose from 65 to 78 fatalities per billion passengers, its highest level over the 2021–2025 period.
Why four fatal accidents produced a higher death toll
The increase in fatalities was not caused by a broader rise in the frequency of fatal accidents. It resulted from the exceptional severity of a small number of events.
One accident alone accounted for 260 fatalities, or approximately 67% of the worldwide total. At the time the report was prepared, ICAO classified that event as UNK — unknown or undetermined, because insufficient investigation information was available to assign a more precise occurrence category.
The remaining fatal accidents were associated with a mid-air collision, a system or powerplant failure followed by loss of control in flight, and a controlled flight into terrain event.
This concentration explains how four fatal accidents could produce a heavier death toll than the ten recorded in 2024. It also shows why the number of accidents and the number of fatalities should not be used interchangeably when evaluating safety performance.
ICAO notes that occurrence classifications may be updated as investigations advance. A single accident may also receive several categories when they reflect different stages in the sequence of events. The 2025 results should therefore be read as the best available assessment at the time of publication rather than as a final conclusion on every accident.
A more nuanced picture for Latin America and the Caribbean
The regional data require careful interpretation.
ICAO’s South America region, known as SAM, recorded an estimated 1.99 million departures, two accidents and an accident rate of 1.00 per million departures. Neither accident was fatal, and the region recorded one serious injury.
The North America, Central America and Caribbean region, or NACC, reported 11.43 million departures, 39 accidents, two fatal accidents and 79 fatalities. Its accident rate reached 3.41 per million departures.
However, NACC includes the United States and Canada as well as Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. The region’s total cannot therefore be presented as a safety result for Central America and the Caribbean alone. Of its 79 fatalities, 67 were associated with an accident in the United States and 12 with an accident in Honduras.
Looking beyond ICAO’s regional aggregates, the report’s accident appendix lists several 2025 events in Latin America and the Caribbean.
In Peru, a BAE Jetstream accident involved a non-powerplant system failure followed by a runway excursion. The aircraft was destroyed, but no fatality or serious injury was reported.
In Honduras, another BAE Jetstream experienced a powerplant failure and loss of control in flight. The accident resulted in 12 fatalities and five serious injuries, making it the only fatal event identified in the report’s Latin American and Caribbean geographic scope.
A Fokker 50 runway excursion in Panama destroyed the aircraft and caused one serious injury and 34 minor injuries. Panama is included in ICAO’s SAM region despite its geographic position in Central America.
In Sint Maarten, a Boeing 737-800 sustained substantial damage in an event involving a non-powerplant system failure and an evacuation. One minor injury was reported. Because of ICAO’s administrative regional structure, Sint Maarten appears under EUR/NAT rather than NACC.
These classifications demonstrate why regional totals alone do not always provide a complete picture of aviation safety across Latin America and the Caribbean.
High-severity risks remain concentrated
ICAO continues to identify five global high-risk categories: controlled flight into terrain, loss of control in flight, mid-air collision, runway excursion and runway incursion.
Together, these categories represented only 15% of the accidents covered by the relevant commercial air transport analysis in 2025. They were, however, associated with 54% of fatal accidents and 32% of fatalities.
The distinction is operationally important. Some categories occur relatively infrequently but carry a much greater potential for loss of life. Others, including abnormal runway contact, non-powerplant system failures and turbulence, account for a larger share of accidents and serious injuries without producing the same level of mortality.
For regulators and operators, the challenge is therefore not only to reduce the total number of occurrences. It is also to prevent low-frequency events such as loss of control, controlled flight into terrain or mid-air collision from escalating into mass-fatality accidents.
Runway safety remains an infrastructure issue
Runway-related events continue to represent a substantial share of the global accident picture.
The categories monitored under ICAO’s Global Runway Safety Action Plan accounted for 29.7% of accidents in 2025. They were also associated with approximately half of the accidents resulting in aircraft being substantially damaged or destroyed, although they represented only 4.6% of serious injuries.
Abnormal runway contact accounted for 13.5% of accidents, ground collisions for 8.1% and runway excursions for 6.3%. No runway-incursion accident was recorded within the report’s commercial air transport scope during the year.
The events reported in Peru and Panama provide regional examples of this broader challenge. Even when runway occurrences do not cause fatalities, they can destroy aircraft, interrupt operations and impose considerable costs on airlines and airport operators.
For airports across Latin America and the Caribbean, runway safety therefore remains closely linked to infrastructure condition, operational procedures, aircraft performance, emergency preparedness and coordination between operators, air navigation services and civil aviation authorities.
Safety performance cannot be reduced to one number
ICAO’s 2025 results do not support a simple conclusion that commercial aviation became either safer or less safe.
The global accident rate decreased. The number and rate of fatal accidents also declined. At the same time, fatalities reached their highest level in five years because a small number of accidents produced exceptionally severe consequences.
South America recorded no fatal accident within the report’s principal statistical scope, but one year of data is not sufficient to establish a lasting regional trend. Loss of control and runway events also remained visible in the wider Latin American and Caribbean accident record.
For authorities, airlines and airport operators, the priority is consequently twofold: continue reducing accident frequency while strengthening the defences intended to prevent an isolated occurrence from developing into a high-fatality event.
