Air India crash makes 2025 deadliest for air travel in years: report

The crash of Air India Flight 171 has turned 2025 into one of the deadliest years in the past decade for civil aviation, according to Bloomberg.

There were over 240 people aboard the Boeing Co. 787 jetliner, according to the airline, when the plane went down in a fireball Thursday shortly after taking off from Ahmedabad, India.

The accident is likely to produce more fatalities given it crashed into a residential area.

Globally, the number of civil aviation fatalities has reached more than 460 in 2025, according to Jan-Arwed Richter, founder of Jacdec, a German consulting firm that tracks aviation safety. The average over the past decade is 284 based on the firm’s methodology.

“This year still has more than six months to go, so this could be concerning if this rate of fatal accidents would go on,” Richter said.

Commercial-aviation safety reached a high-water mark in 2023, when industry groups said there were no fatal crashes. Since then, a number of high-profile incidents have grabbed headlines.