(Bloomberg) — Three fatal airline crashes in a week mean 2014 is shaping up to become the worst year in almost a decade for passenger fatalities.
The crash of a McDonnell Douglas MD-83 aircraft on the fringes of the Sahara desert yesterday follows the loss of an ATR-72 turboprop in storms in Taiwan on July 23 and the downing of Malaysian Air Flight MH17 over Ukraine last week.
The African incident involving a plane operating for Air Algerie takes the 2014 toll to 680 travelers, assuming those on the jet died, higher than 12-month totals for the past three years, according to air-safety consultants at Ascend Worldwide. With five months remaining, a further 111 deaths would make this the most lethal year since 2005, when 916 lives were lost, though Ascend's head of safety Paul Hayes said the direction in accident-related fatalities is still down.
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