The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has published the Annual Safety Review (ASR) 2025, which provides a comprehensive analysis of aviation safety in 2024 and compares
it with trends from the past decade.
The report supports the European Safety Risk Management (SRM) process and is a key input
to the European Plan for Aviation Safety (EPAS). The ASR provides a detailed overview of accidents and occurrences across the different aviation domains, and examines both
long-term trends and new developments.
While the ASR 2025 confirms that Europe remains one of the safest regions for aviation, it
also emphasises that vigilance is essential. Continuous monitoring of risks, learning from occurrences, and adapting to emerging challenges, such as drone integration and new technologies, remain critical.
Highlights from the 2024 data
- Traffic levels: European air traffic continued its strong recovery with over 7.7 million flights operated by 623 air operator certificate (AOC) holders.
- Global context: There were 14 fatal accidents worldwide in 2024 with 304 fatalities. These statistics are both in line with the 10-year average.
- Commercial air transport (CAT) — Aeroplanes: Europe saw 3 fatal accidents leading to 3 fatalities.
- General Aviation: There were a total of 27 fatal accidents in Europe, leading to 44 fatalities. This represents a slight decrease compared with recent years.
- Rotorcraft: This domain saw 7 fatal accidents with 14 fatalities across Europe. This is consistent with historical patterns in the Rotorcraft domain.
- Sailplanes: There were 10 fatal accidents involving Sailplanes with 12 fatalities. This is the lowest level of annual fatalities ever recorded in this domain of aviation.
- Drones / Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS): The reporting of occurrences continues to increase, underlining the growing importance of safe integration into the European airspace. This is a key part of EASA’s U-Space implementation.
