With a billion more travellers in a year, air traffic rises

The number of passengers travelling by air increased 31 per cent to 4.2 billion in 2023, according to a report by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). The number was over 3.2bn passengers in 2022 but slightly below the pre-pandemic levels of 4.5bn passengers in 2019. In its ‘2024 Safety Report’ released this week, the global aviation body said 2023 was the safest of the past five years in terms of safety indicators such as global accident rate, number of fatal accidents, total fatalities and fatality rate. The number of commercial flight departures also increased by 13pc to over 35m in 2023, compared to around 31m in 2022.