What were the deadliest years in aviation?

The worst crash year on record — 1972 — also had the most deaths: 2,429. The deadliest aviation accident in history didn't even occur in any of the top 10 years. In 1977, two Boeing 747s collided on a runway on the Spanish island of Tenerife, killing 583. Compare that with the best years on record in the graphic below.



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The worst crash year on record — 1972 — also had the most deaths: 2,429. The deadliest aviation accident in history didn't even occur in any of the top 10 years. In 1977, two Boeing 747s collided on a runway on the Spanish island of Tenerife, killing 583.

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The worst aviation crash in history took place 46 years ago on the small Atlantic island of Tenerife. In total, 583 people lost their lives in a crash that was caused by a disastrous chain of events, poor communication, and fog.

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Running since 1929, Hawaiian is among the oldest airlines in the world but, remarkably, it has never suffered a single fatal crash or hull loss.

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There were initially 70 survivors, but 9 passengers later died of their injuries. Among the survivors were the captain, first officer and flight engineer. Most of the survivors on the Pan Am walked out onto the intact left wing, the side away from the collision, through holes in the fuselage structure.

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Security screenings didn't become mandatory until the early 1970s when bigger flights meant more passengers. Security screenings didn't become mandatory until 1973, and even those were pretty relaxed compared to the airport security we go through today, The Boston Globe reported.

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This was the Golden Age of Flight. Specifically, the interwar years between 1918 and 1939 saw a breakthrough in aviation that revolutionized the way people fly and changed twentieth-century history .

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Tenerife airline disaster, runway collision of two Boeing 747 passenger airplanes in the Canary Islands on March 27, 1977. The disaster killed more than 580 people. Both planes involved in the crash had been scheduled to depart from Las Palmas on the island of Gran Canaria.

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The first decade of the 21st Century has been widely regarded as the US airline industry's lost decade. The reasons behind this are easy to see in the wake of the statistics issued by both the US Air Transport Association (ATA) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

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KLM, officially known as KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, holds the prestigious title of being the oldest airline in the world still operating under its original name. Founded on October 7th, 1919, by a visionary group led by Dutch pilot Albert Plesman (1889–1953), KLM has a rich history that spans over a century.

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Undefeated record: The world record for the world's longest continuous flight was set in 1959 by Robert Timm (pictured) and his co-pilot John Cook. Months in the air: The men flew in this four-seater aircraft for 64 days, 22 hours and 19 minutes.

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The ICAO attributes the improvements in safety to the safety commitments shared across the industry. In fact, the trend across many years of aviation is that, today, it is safer than ever to fly.

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Aircraft age is not a safety factor. However, if the aircraft is older and hasn't been refurbished properly, it may cause flyers some inconvenience such as overheating, faulty air conditioning, or faulty plumbing in the lavatory.

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No one aboard the KLM aircraft survived, and only 71 people escaped from the Pan Am wreckage. Sixty-one of them survived, including some of the flight attendants - here, we take a look at their story.

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Pan Am, having once called itself The World's Most Experienced Airline, eventually filed for bankruptcy protection in January 1991. Due to rising fuel costs, as well as an inability to operate domestic routes the airline was starting to run at a loss.

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