Under scrutiny

Airline incidents in the new media age

In 1998 then IATA DG Pierre Jeanniot warned that if the industry did not aggressively address the crash rate then “at a future time when there is twice as much traffic we will have twice as many accidents.” His warning was also in the context that the crash rate and resultant publicity would be a major impediment to travel growth.

While the crash rate has improved dramatically from 1.4 crashes per one million departures in 1996 to 0.71 in 2009 the public’s safety perception of the industry has been the opposite due to the dramatic increase in use of cell phones with picture and video capability combined with phenomenal growth of social media, while special interest groups, such as unions, leak everyday routine incidents to an essentially lay media hungry for news to further their agendas.