Flying has become safer over the years, in general—but if you're flying near a conflict zone, there's some cause for concern. Missiles have become the biggest killer of airline passengers over the past decade, reports the Wall Street Journal. If Wednesday's crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane in Kazakhstan is found to have been caused by a Russian missile, which aviation experts say is likely, it would bring the number of deaths from aircraft being accidentally blown out of the sky during armed conflicts since 2014 to more than 500, according to the Aviation Safety Network. The Azerbaijani crash, which killed 38, would be the third such accidental shootdown in 10 years.
"No other cause of aviation fatalities on commercial airliners comes close to shootdowns over those years," the Journal notes. For context, in the decade before 2014, there were exactly zero deadly shootdowns on commercial passenger planes, according to ASN stats. "It adds to the worrying catalog of shootdowns now," says aviation risk adviser Andy Blackwell. "You've got the conventional threats, from terrorists and terrorist groups, but now you've got this accidental risk as well."
Circling back to the Kazakhstan crash, the Kremlin is currently pooh-poohing accusations that a Russian missile took down the Azerbaijan Airlines plane, per the New York Post—despite the fact that the aircraft's tail appears to be "peppered with holes." "It would be incorrect to make any hypotheses before the investigation comes to conclusions, and we definitely cannot do it and no one should do it," Putin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Thursday. (More plane crash stories.)
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