Accidental missile attacks on commercial airliners have become the [1]leading cause of aviation fatalities in recent years (Warning: source paywalled; [2]alternative source ), driven by rising global conflicts and the proliferation of advanced antiaircraft weaponry. Despite improvements in aviation safety overall, inconsistent risk assessments, political complexities, and rapid military escalations make protecting civilian flights in conflict zones increasingly difficult. The Wall Street Journal reports:

> The [3]crash Wednesday of an Azerbaijan Airlines jetliner in Kazakhstan, if officially confirmed as a midair attack, would be the third major fatal downing of a passenger jet linked to armed conflict since 2014, according to the Flight Safety Foundation's Aviation Safety Network, a global database of accidents and incidents. The tally would bring to more than 500 the number of deaths from such attacks during that period. Preliminary results of Azerbaijan's investigation into the crash indicate the plane was hit by a Russian antiaircraft missile, or shrapnel from it, said people briefed on the probe.

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> "It adds to the worrying catalog of shootdowns now," said Andy Blackwell, an aviation risk adviser at security specialist ISARR and former head of security at Virgin Atlantic. "You've got the conventional threats, from terrorists and terrorist groups, but now you've got this accidental risk as well." No other cause of aviation fatalities on commercial airliners comes close to shootdowns over those years, according to ASN data. The deadliness of such attacks is a dramatic shift: In the preceding 10 years, there were no fatal shootdowns of scheduled commercial passenger flights, ASN data show. The trend highlights the difficulty -- if not impossibility -- of protecting civilian aviation in war zones, even for rigorous aviation regulators, because of the politics of war. Early last century similar woes plagued sea travel, when belligerents targeted ocean transport.

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> Increasing civilian aviation deaths from war also reflect both a growing number of armed conflicts internationally and the increasing prevalence of powerful antiaircraft weaponry. If a missile was indeed the cause of this week's disaster, it would mean that the three deadliest shootdowns of the past decade all involved apparently unintended targetings of passenger planes flying near conflict zones, by forces that had been primed to hit enemy military aircraft. Two of those incidents were linked to Russia: Wednesday's crash of an Embraer E190 with 67 people aboard, of whom 38 died, and the midair destruction in 2014 of a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 flying over a battle zone in Ukraine, on which all 298 people aboard died. The other major downing was the mistaken shooting in 2020 by Iranian forces of a Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737 departing Tehran, killing all 176 people onboard. Iran's missile defense systems had been on alert for a potential U.S. strike at the time.



[1] https://www.wsj.com/world/flight-deaths-shot-from-sky-rising-798fd31e

[2] https://archive.is/Gp05K

[3] https://archive.is/T0atg