If you’ve been scrolling through your news feed lately, you might feel like the sky is literally falling. Every other week, there’s a new headline about a "terrifying near-miss" or a tragic hull loss. It feels heavy. Honestly, after the mid-air collision over the Potomac in January 2025 and the Air India disaster in June, it’s natural to wonder if we’ve hit some kind of breaking point in aviation safety.
But feelings aren’t data.
The short answer to the question are there more plane crashes in 2025 is actually a bit of a "yes and no" situation. It depends entirely on whether you’re looking at the number of people who died or the number of times metal actually hit the ground. If you look at the raw fatalities, 2025 was a brutal year compared to the "miracle years" we had recently. But if you look at the total number of accidents, the trend is surprisingly different.
The Raw Numbers: 2025 by the Books
Let’s get the grim stuff out of the way first. According to the Aviation Safety Network and the German Aviation Association (BDL), 418 people lost their lives in commercial aviation accidents globally in 2025.
That is a jump.
In 2024, that number was 334. In 2023, it was an incredibly low 72 (depending on which specific aircraft mass you're counting). So, when you see a headline saying 2025 was more "deadly," they aren't lying. The Air India Flight 171 crash in Ahmedabad alone accounted for 242 of those deaths on board, plus 19 more on the ground. It was the first fatal hull loss for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, and it single-handedly skewed the year's statistics.
However—and this is a big "however"—the actual number of accidents is falling.
To70, the aviation consultancy that tracks these things religiously, noted that there were only five fatal accidents involving large passenger aircraft in all of 2025. Five. Out of millions of flights. Statistically, that’s a rate of about one fatal accident for every 7 million flights. To put that in perspective, the rate in 2024 was about one in every 5 million.
So, while the crashes that did happen were more catastrophic in terms of life lost, the frequency of planes falling out of the sky actually decreased. You're basically looking at a lower number of events but a higher "severity" per event.
Why 2025 Felt So Much More Dangerous
Perception is everything. In the US, we had a 16-year streak without a major commercial airline crash. That streak ended on January 29, 2025.
When American Airlines Flight 5342—a CRJ700—collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River, it shattered the public’s sense of invincibility. All 67 people involved died. Because it happened in the backyard of the nation's capital and involved a commercial jet, it stayed in the news cycle for months.
Then you had the "Potomac effect." Every minor issue suddenly became front-page news. A Delta Connection flight flipped over in Toronto (thankfully everyone survived), a Med Jets Learjet crashed in Philly, and a UPS cargo plane went down in Louisville.
When you see these back-to-back, your brain does this thing called "availability bias." You remember the scary stories easily, so you assume they are happening more often. But the NTSB actually reported that in the first quarter of 2025, there were 256 aircraft accidents in the US. That sounds like a lot, right?
It’s actually the lowest Q1 number since 2014.
The New Threats: Turbulence and GPS Jamming
While we’re getting better at keeping engines from failing and wings from falling off, 2025 highlighted some "new" problems that are getting worse.
One of the biggest issues last year wasn't even a crash—it was turbulence. IATA and EASA both pointed out that nearly half of all non-fatal "accidents" (where people get seriously hurt but the plane is fine) were caused by in-flight turbulence. We are talking about 24 major occurrences where flight attendants and passengers were tossed against the ceiling. Climate change is making "clear air turbulence" more frequent and harder to predict.
Then there’s the tech side.
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IATA’s 2025 reports sounded a massive alarm on GNSS (GPS) interference. Spoofing and jamming incidents increased by over 200% compared to previous years. This isn't just a "glitch." In places near conflict zones, pilots are seeing their navigation systems tell them they are miles away from where they actually are. While this hasn't caused a major "controlled flight into terrain" (CFIT) for a big airline yet, it’s the ghost in the machine that keeps safety experts awake at night.
Are There More Plane Crashes in 2025? The Expert Verdict
If you ask a statistician, they’ll tell you that 2025 was a "safe" year with a "high fatality count." It’s a weird nuance.
The probability of dying in a plane crash in 2025 was roughly 0.14 per million flights. That is still safer than almost any other year in the 1990s or 2000s. The long-term trend is still moving toward safer skies, even if 2025 had some high-profile tragedies that made us all a bit nervous to book a ticket.
So, what should you actually worry about? Honestly? Wear your seatbelt. Even when the sign is off. Most of the "incidents" in 2025 that resulted in hospital visits happened because people were walking around when the plane hit a pocket of rough air.
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How to Stay Informed and Safe
If you’re still feeling anxious about the state of aviation, here is how you should actually look at the "safety" of your next flight:
- Check the Airline, Not Just the Year: Statistics show that airlines on the IOSA (IATA Operational Safety Audit) registry have an accident rate nearly 50% lower than those that aren't. Most major carriers are on this list.
- Monitor the Route: Most of the weirdness in 2025 (like GPS spoofing) happened in specific corridors—Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Southeast Asia. If you're flying domestic US or intra-Europe, the risk profile is different.
- Follow Real Investigations: If you see a "crash" headline, wait for the NTSB or EASA preliminary report. For example, the UPS Louisville crash was later traced to a specific fatigue crack in an engine mount that Boeing had known about since 2011. Knowledge like that leads to "Airworthiness Directives" (ADs) that force every other airline to fix the part immediately.
The aviation industry is a giant "learning machine." Every time something goes wrong, the system iterates. 2025 gave the industry a lot of hard lessons, particularly regarding mid-air coordination and regional jet maintenance. Those lessons are already being baked into the regulations for 2026.
Keep your seatbelt fastened, look at the long-term averages instead of the weekly headlines, and remember that even in a "bad" year like 2025, you are still statistically safer in that pressurized tube at 35,000 feet than you were in the Uber on the way to the airport.