Commercial Flying Is Safer Than 25 Years Ago, Aviation Data Group Says, as Incoming Democratic Majority Eyes Airlines

On Nov. 1, a Learjet 60 bound for the Bahamas from Austin, Texas, entered a sudden nosedive and slammed into a multi-lane highway. All nine people aboard died. Footage of the impact spread across social media within hours.

The obvious question followed: is flying getting more dangerous?

The long-term numbers say no for commercial travel. Jan-Arwed Richter, founder and CEO of the German Aviation Safety Bureau (JACDEC), says we are in "the safest era of air travel in history."

What the numbers show

Richter's data shows the trend. In 2001, JACDEC counted 1,155 fatalities across all civil aviation, in the air or on the ground. In 2025, it counted 499.

During that stretch, passenger volume exploded. Richter says the world went from 1.7 billion air travelers a year at the start of the millennium to almost five billion, an increase of 192 percent.

Fewer deaths, far more people flying. He also says the gains are global, pointing to new safety rules in the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Iran and Papua New Guinea. "I can't think of any other industry that has learned from faults, mishaps and disasters in a similar fashion to civil aviation," Richter said.

The private jet exception

There is a catch. Richter says private jets, small aircraft and helicopters remain considerably riskier than airliners, even though commercial carriers have improved over the past 25 years.

Private charters are still statistically very safe, he says, but carry more risk. They operate under slightly different rules and pressures than airlines.

Precise charter fatality figures are hard to produce, according to Richter, because operators often keep their passengers confidential.

The cause of the Austin crash has not been established in the information available as of today, Nov. 12. Investigators will determine the cause, not speculation.

Washington changes hands

The politics around flying are shifting too. NPR's Joel Rose reports that an incoming Democratic majority in Congress could push for tougher oversight of airlines.

Geoff Freeman, CEO of the U.S. Travel Association, says the hardest part of the new environment is unpredictability: how Democrats assert control, and how a president in his final two years reacts. "The unpredictability certainly has us in the mindset of buckle up," Freeman said.

Freeman's biggest worry is another government shutdown. Rose notes that during earlier partial shutdowns in Trump's first two years, TSA officers and air traffic controllers sometimes went unpaid. Many called out sick or took second jobs. The result in some places was hourslong security lines and delayed or canceled flights.

That happened with Republicans running both the White House and Congress. Freeman says divided government makes a repeat even more likely.

Federal workers who keep planes safe and airports moving shouldn't be the ones who miss paychecks because Washington can't pass a budget. That applies to whichever party is holding the leverage.

The fight over ticket pricing

Democrats ran heavily on affordability, and airline pricing is on their radar. Rose says some Democrats have been asking questions about what consumer advocates call "surveillance pricing," where companies use customers' private data to personalize what they charge based on what they think a buyer will pay.

Airlines deny doing that. Rose reports the industry does use sophisticated algorithms to set fares, but the carriers reject the surveillance-pricing label.

Chris Sununu, head of Airlines for America, the trade group for the biggest U.S. carriers, argues more rules would backfire. "If you're worried about affordability, the last thing they should be doing is piling unnecessary regulation specifically onto the airline industry that is already, far and away, one of the most regulated industries," Sununu said. "Every regulation has a cost. And that goes to the consumer."

That is the core dispute. Consumer advocates and some Democrats want to know how personal data feeds into fares. The airlines say they do not do what is alleged, and that added mandates raise prices.

What comes next

Neither the safety trend nor the political shift offers an easy takeaway. The data show an industry that has cut deaths by more than half while nearly tripling its passenger count. The private-jet segment is the clear gap, and its data is the murkiest.

The open questions are political. Which airline measures the new Democratic majority actually pursues, whether a shutdown standoff puts TSA and air traffic control paychecks at risk again, and how a president with two years left responds are all unknown as of today.