Current trend lines indicate commercial airlines will have one of their safest years in 2006, despite the Oct. 29 crash in Nigeria. There have been 10 major aircraft accidents so far this year for commercial airliners. The accident rate "shows a significant downward trend" and results should be better even than in 2004, James M. Burin, director general of technical programs at the Flight Safety Foundation, said just before the Nigerian accident. One point of concern, though, is that after a good start, the past two months have seen seven crashes. There were 16 major accidents in all of 2005 and 13 in 2004.
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