The evolution of airline safety, a crucial aspect that affects millions of international passengers, has undergone substantial waves of transformations between the last couple of decades. Our project delves into a comprehensive airline safety dataset, revealing insights about incidents, accidents, and fatalities across a multitude of airlines, expressing the variation of such safety metrics between two time periods: 1985-1999 and 2000-2014.

Our primary dataset provides a historical account of airline safety spanning several decades. As mentioned before, this dataset provides a detailed view of safety indicators, recording incidents, accidents, and fatalities for each recognized airline. To enhance this core dataset, we’ve included additional data pinpointing the country of origin for each airline and the Human Development Index (HDI) scores for every country from 1990-2021. These supplemental
datasets provide a broader context, enabling an exploration of the correlations between diverse factors and airline safety.

We aim to shed light in the following ways:

1. What are the discernible patterns in incidents, accidents, and fatalities among the foremost airlines during the periods of 1985-1999 and 2000-2014, and how have these patterns evolved over time to potentially shape the future of aviation safety?
2. How have the geographical distributions of incidents, accidents, and fatalities changed between the periods of 1985-1999 and 2000-2014, and what patterns can be discerned from these changes?
3. Is there a discernible relationship between a country’s Human Development Index (HDI) score and the frequency, severity, and types of incidents, accidents, and fatalities?

Airline safety has been extensively studied in the literature from various perspectives, and is a common topic of discussion when it comes to safety within the transportation sector. 

Overall, the general consensus with research generally agrees that airline safety standards are relatively high, particularly in the U.S. and other developed countries. Upon further analysis, this is attributed to a combination of rigorous regulations that promote a high standard of safety. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the United States, is a great example of an institution that is renowned for robust safety benchmarks as well as an amazing record at significantly minimizing the rate of accidents.

For the most part, international airlines also aim to perform at a higher standard, but to a certain point, there does exist a divergence when it comes to consistency of these standards. For most international airlines, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) sets global guidelines but not all nations adhere which leads to variations in safety protocols among airlines outside of the US. At a more refined lens, this disparity becomes prevalent when comparing developed and undeveloped countries.

Now, contradictions begin to arise when it comes to airline safety based on geographical location. Some believe that U.S. airlines are safer, but others debate that there exist international airlines that maintain similar safety standards.
Although much debate, there does seem to be an agreement that there exists some level of risk associated with airlines operating in underdeveloped regions. It’s not uncommon for many to hold this viewpoint, given the influence of our mental frameworks, which often lead us to believe that underdeveloped countries may struggle to ensure a satisfactory level of airline safety due to resource limitations.

When the topics of airline accidents come to mind, it is universally acknowledged that maintaining airline safety is a big priority. Although we see a general consensus, there is a varying approach as to how to tackle the issue. Some argue that technology is important but others argue a different approach such as a universal standard of airline safety. Taking this a step further, there are still some topics of discussion as to what are the best ways to maintain and improve safety standards, with a higher priority in less developed countries. 

Overall, while there is general agreement on the high standards of airline safety, disagreements still exist. Questions about disparities in international safety standards, effective strategies for incident prevention, and the untapped research areas surrounding cultural and psychological impacts suggest the need for further exploration.

We hope our project can showcase more concrete answers that can help understand if there are specific reasons why these accidents happened and if certain countries seem to be more unsafe than others. Our research for our project can be useful in understanding if there are certain trends among these airlines and why some accidents more fatal than others. Hopefully through this research, it can fuel a greater understanding of airline safety, and potentially aid in the prevention of any future accidents.

Thus, airline safety remains a complex, multifaceted topic and we hope that our perspectives through our analysis can lead to any advancement in answering those questions.

This initiative holds significant value as it delves into the relatively unexplored aspects of airline safety, addressing questions that demand further exploration. The focus is on a comprehensive analysis of aviation accidents across a broad spectrum of airlines, their countries of origin, and their respective level of development. The aim is to identify potential correlations between these variable, and potentially unlock more insight.

Additionally, this initiative includes an analysis of the overall changes that have occurred over the specific timeframe covered by the dataset. By examining this data over several decades, shifts in the safety records of certain airlines can be discerned and looked into further.

This initiative also explores the impact of a country’s level of development on its airline’s safety record, offering a fresh perspective on the factors contributing to airline accidents. By assessing a country’s level of development, through the HDI, can yield value by potentially drawing correlations between a country’s level of development and airline safety.

From the big picture, the overarching goal is to facilitate a deeper understanding of whether certain variables, such as origin or regulation, could impact airline safety during the two time periods under analysis.