No Fly Zone? Most Dangerous Places for Air Travel

Another deadly plane crash in Indonesia, a nation that has had more than its share. (Photo: AP)

In eastern Indonesia, rescuers have started the grim task of removing the bodies from the wreckage of a Trigana Air ATR 42-300 turboprop that crashed in bad weather Sunday. All 54 people aboard died, including five children.

Besides being an undeniable tragedy, Sunday’s incident was the third Indonesian crash in recent months. In June, a military plane crashed into a residential neighborhood in Medan, killing more than 100 people in the plane and on the ground. And in December, a Singapore-bound AirAsia flight that took off from Indonesia disappeared over the Java Sea. That accident resulted in 162 deaths.

Those crashes, and the renewed attention on Indonesia’s questionable air safety record, bring up a rarely discussed fact of air travel: Some nations simply are more dangerous to fly in than others.

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The plane that crashed Sunday was similar to this Trigana Air ATR 42-300. (Photo: AP)

“The most dangerous places to fly, from an aviation standpoint, are typically underdeveloped and economically challenged countries,” says Kyle Bailey, an aviation safety analyst, pilot, and FAA Safety Team representative. These countries, Bailey says, “typically lack aviation infrastructure, regulation, government safety oversight and security — which, in turn, can drastically affect the operational safety of the air carriers in a particular region. To make matters worse, in these particular regions, fierce competition and a carrier’s financial woes could cause it to cut corners on aircraft maintenance and crew training.”

Indonesia has an especially noxious cocktail of problems plaguing its air safety. The European Union has banned 59 of Indonesia’s 63 airlines from flying in EU airspace. In the U.S., the Federal Aviation Administration has Indonesia on its list of Category 2 countries that don’t meet minimum international safety standards. (Countries that get the FAA’s dreaded Category 2 rating aren’t banned from the U.S., but their airlines can’t expand service to the country and are subject to additional inspections at U.S. airports.)

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Adding insult to injury is the region’s unpredictable weather, which regulators view as a likely culprit in Indonesia’s AirAsia crash in December and this week’s Trigana Air tragedy.

A piece of AirAsia Flight 8501, which crashed in the Java Sea after taking off from Indonesia in December. All 162 people aboard were lost. (Photo: AP)

But Indonesia is not the only place where you might think twice about flying. Air regulators have learned that air safety can vary greatly country to country — flying on a U.S.-based airline, for example, is exponentially safer than flying on one from, say, the African nation of Djibouti. Often, spotty air safety records are a regional problem more so than a national problem.

Watch: Indonesia Crash Raises Serious Air Safety Concerns

In a five-year study of air accidents from 2009 to 2013, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) looked at the accident rates per million flights for eight regions. It found the worldwide average was 2.48 accidents per million flights. Three regions had accident rates below that average: North Asia (.82), which includes China, South Korea, and Japan; North America (1.38); and Europe (2.03). As for the five regions that were above the global accident rate average, some contain countries with safety records ranging from the questionable to the abysmal.

IATA looked at plane accident rates by region and found some significant variances that might make you reconsider flying on an African airline. (Graphic: IATA)

Travelers know that in some parts of the world, air travel is unavoidable — if you want to see Indonesia and its nearly 18,000 islands, for example, you’ll probably have to fly domestically. So it’s important to know before your trip which countries’ airlines have air safety issues that might make you reconsider your itinerary. Here are the regions — and countries — of the world where flying might give you pause.

Africa

40 people died in a 2008 crash in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of several African nations with serious air safety issues. (Photo: AP)

Air regulators agree: The continent of Africa is a particularly troublesome flying spot. In its five-year study, IATA found Africa had an accident rate of a whopping 12.45 per 1 million flights — more than twice as high as any other region and well above the global five-year average of 2.48. The accident rate for 2014 alone wasn’t encouraging either: 11.18 compared to the global average of 1.92. Numerous African nations — including Angola, Djibouti, Eritrea, and Sierra Leone — have been roundly criticized by international regulators for their safety issues. Airlines from all four of those nations have earned red flags from the U.N.’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) because of safety concerns over their ability to oversee their airlines. The four countries are also banned from flying in Europe, as are 11 other African nations, including Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Liberia.

Commonwealth of Independent States

Russia’s air troubles have been well documented. In 2012, this Tu-204 aircraft belonging to Russian airline Red Wings careened off the runway at Russia’s third-busiest airport, killing five people. (Photo: AP)

According to IATA, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which is made up of former Soviet nations, had a five-year accident rate of 5.92. This region has been problematic for some time; in 2011, Sky News dubbed Russia “the most dangerous place to fly.” Meanwhile, Kazakhstan is on Europe’s blacklist of banned nations, and the U.N.’s ICAO issued one of its red flags to Georgia. Add the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in Ukraine last year, and this remains one troublesome region in which to fly.

Middle East and North Africa

Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 crashed in Tripoli, Libya, in May 2010, killing 103 people. The sole survivor was a 9-year-old Dutch boy. (Photo: AP)

Though home to some of the world’s most luxurious and best-run airlines, like Qatar Airways and Emirates, the region as a whole has seen more than its share of troubles, including in the area of air safety. The region’s five-year accident rate was 5.43. Airlines from Afghanistan and Libya are not welcome in Europe, and Lebanon earned a red flag from ICAO.

Latin America and the Caribbean

All 14 people aboard this commercial plane died in a 2011 crash on the outskirts of the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa. (Photo: AP)

Latin America and the Caribbean had a five-year accident rate of 3.36. The countries of Nicaragua, Uruguay, Barbados, Curaçao, and Saint-Martin each have a Category 2 rating from the FAA. ICAO has red-flagged Haiti.

Asia-Pacific

A military plane crashed into a residential neighborhood in Medan, Indonesia, in June, killing more than 100 people in the plane and on the ground. (Photo: AP)

This region’s 2.76 five-year accident rate is just above the global average of 2.48, but recent incidents have proven more worrisome. Nepal’s airlines aren’t welcome in Europe, and Bangladesh’s airlines are Category 2 in the U.S.

Then, of course, there was this week’s crash in Indonesia, a country that is on both Europe’s and America’s lists of bad nations to fly in. Last year, an MIT statistician told the New York Times that in the past decade, Indonesia’s plane crash death rate was 1 per million passengers who boarded — 25 times the rate in the United States.

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So, what can travelers do to judge a nation’s airworthiness for themselves?

First, remember that worldwide, flying remains overall an incredibly safe way to travel. The United Nations’ ICAO says 2014 saw the second-lowest airplane accident rate since the organization began keeping track: 3.0 accidents per 1 million departures. That means that if you were to fly once a day, every day, for 2,700 years, you’d experience only three accidents. (The 2014 rate did increase from 2.8 in 2013, largely because of the Malaysia Airlines tragedies in Ukraine and the Indian Ocean.)

But you should still do your research. You can start by checking out the European Union’s list of banned or restricted air carriers. (Trigana Air is on that list.) And you can download the results of the FAA’s International Aviation Safety Assessment (IASA) Program, where the agency doles out its Category 2 ratings.

You can also check the stats yourself. “Sites like airlineratings.com are very helpful when trying to choose a safe airline in a particular region of the globe,” says Bailey, who offers another piece of advice. “When traveling outside
of the United States, it is a good practice to always choose scheduled airline service, rather than unscheduled, ‘on-demand’ air taxi service.”

If you must fly in these troublesome regions, doing your homework on airlines and the nations in which they operate is a prudent investment of your time. It’s hard work, but there are upsides: Not only will it help you make good flying decisions, but it’s also one of the few activities that can make you appreciate the state of air travel in the United States.

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