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Aviation Deaths Tick Up in 2020 Despite Drastic Slump in Air Travel

Dec. 29—JOHANNESBURG — The number of people killed in plane crashes grew in 2020 despite the dramatic slump in the number of aviation passengers in the pandemic.

A total of 318 people were killed in commercial aviation accidents in 2020, an increase of 25 deaths compared with 2019, figures from the Hamburg-based Jet Airliner Crash Data Evaluation Centre (JACDEC) flight safety authority show.

That was the case despite the overall number of fatal accidents involving planes falling from 27 in 2019 to just nine in 2020.

This is because the majority of the fatalities, or 86 per cent, can be attributed to two accidents: the shooting down of a Ukrainian passenger plane in Iran in January and the crash of a Pakistani commercial airliner in Karachi in May.

A total of 176 people were killed in the Tehran crash, for which Iran ultimately admitted "unintentional" responsibility.

The crash of the Pakistani Airbus A320 into a residential area in Karachi killed 97 people on board and one on the ground.

The international industry association IATA estimates that flight activity plummeted up to 70 per cent over the whole of 2020 in some regions.

The JACDEC has been registering and analysing accidents and serious incidents in civil aviation for around three decades. All aircraft weighing more than 5.7 tons or with more than 19 seats are recorded.