Data · Aviation accidents
Aviation accidents by state and year
How many civil aircraft accidents the NTSB records in each state each year, how many were fatal and how many people died, and whether they involved general aviation, airlines, commuter and on-demand flights or farm flying. The counts come from the NTSB's own aviation database and are checked against its person-level injury records.
What is in this dataset?
Civil aviation accidents in the United States investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board, for the nation and for each state, DC, Puerto Rico and Guam in each year from 2008 to September 2026: accidents, fatal accidents, deaths, serious and minor injuries, and the accidents and deaths by type of operation of the first aircraft (general aviation, airlines, commuter and on-demand, agricultural, other). NTSB incidents, accidents abroad, narratives and probable causes are not included. Accidents offshore or with no state are counted in the national record only.
Use it to size aviation-injury demand by state: where accidents and deaths concentrate, how general aviation compares with commercial flying, and how counts moved from year to year, as context for aviation-accident and wrongful-death work. Agents can look up a state, compare several, or search by year or place.
- Records
- 985
- Look up by
- 54
- state
- Primary-source records
- 985
The letters are explained in what P, S, D and U mean.
Where does the data come from?
The NTSB publishes its aviation accident database as a downloadable Access file rebuilt monthly. Each U.S. accident (not incident) is counted once in its state and year, by the type of operation (FAR part) of its first aircraft; deaths, serious and minor injuries are the event totals. Only counts are kept: narratives, names, registrations, places and times are dropped. A gate re-derives the totals from the person-level injury table of the same file, re-downloads the file and re-derives 50 random state-year cells.
- Period covered
- January 1, 2008 to September 30, 2026
- Places
- The whole US and states
- How often we refresh it
- Every month
- Records read
- October 29, 2026
Official sources
- National Transportation Safety Board, by bulk download. NTSB website policy: content prepared by federal employees is not subject to copyright and 'may be freely copied'; the NTSB asks that uses be accurate and complete (https://www.ntsb.gov/about/Policies/Pages/Policies.aspx). The data directory is public with no login.
The sources the records cite most
- NTSB downloadable aviation dataset (avall): 985 records
What does a record look like?
-
Texas, 2008: the NTSB recorded 115 civil aviation accidents, 20 of them fatal, with 35 deaths and 23 serious injuries; by type of operation: 102 general aviation, 9 agricultural.
Status P · checked October 29, 2026 · source: NTSB downloadable aviation dataset (avall)
-
Florida, 2008: the NTSB recorded 127 civil aviation accidents, 21 of them fatal, with 44 deaths and 24 serious injuries; by type of operation: 120 general aviation, 4 commuter and on-demand.
Status P · checked October 29, 2026 · source: NTSB downloadable aviation dataset (avall)
-
United States, 2008: the NTSB recorded 1,641 civil aviation accidents, 280 of them fatal, with 519 deaths and 272 serious injuries; by type of operation: 1,440 general aviation, 96 agricultural.
Status P · checked October 29, 2026 · source: NTSB downloadable aviation dataset (avall)
The full records add the dates, the quoted source text and every field in the CSV and JSON files below.
What each of the 23 main columns means
jurisdiction- Two-letter state or territory code, or US
level- state or us
year- Calendar year of the accident
status- P: the NTSB's own record
value- Accidents (the same as accidents)
accidents- Civil aviation accidents recorded by the NTSB (not incidents)
fatal_accidents- Accidents with at least one death
fatalities- Deaths in those accidents
serious_injuries- Serious injuries
minor_injuries- Minor injuries
accidents_ga- Accidents of general aviation (FAR Part 91)
accidents_airline- Accidents of scheduled airlines (Part 121)
accidents_ondemand- Accidents of commuter and on-demand operations (Part 135)
accidents_agri- Accidents of agricultural operations (Part 137)
accidents_other- Accidents of all other operations (non-U.S.-registered, public, military, unmanned, unclassified)
fatalities_ga- Deaths in general aviation accidents
fatalities_airline- Deaths in airline accidents
fatalities_ondemand- Deaths in commuter and on-demand accidents
fatalities_agri- Deaths in agricultural accidents
fatalities_other- Deaths in other accidents
accidents_outside_states- US records: accidents offshore or with no state, counted in the US total only
fatalities_outside_states- US records: deaths in those accidents
dataThrough- Last date in the NTSB file
How do I use it in my own tools?
aviation_lookup- For one two-letter state or territory code, or US: accidents, fatal accidents, deaths and injuries by year since 2008, with the split by type of operation.
aviation_compare- The records of up to 10 states (or US) side by side: accidents, deaths and injuries by year and type of operation.
aviation_search- Records whose text matches the words given, such as a year ("2024"), a state or "general aviation".
How to cite this dataset
You can reuse, adapt and republish this data, including commercially, under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC BY 4.0). The only condition is that you credit Probative and link to the source.
- Version
- 1.0.0, released October 30, 2026
- Every version
- 10.5281/zenodo.23792733 (always points to the newest)
- License
- CC BY 4.0
Download the data
- CSV: aviation-accidents.csv 487 KB · one row per record (columns in README.txt)
- JSON: aviation-accidents.json 1383 KB · every record with its sources
Free, no email or login. The files are hosted on this site and Zenodo, a public research archive.
Suggested citation
Probative. (2026). Civil aviation accidents by state, year and type of operation (NTSB), 2008 to 2026 (Version 1.0.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23792734
Credit line for a chart, table or article
Source: Probative, Civil aviation accidents by state, year and type of operation (NTSB), 2008 to 2026, version 1.0.0, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23792734, licensed CC BY 4.0.
Add to a reference manager (Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote)
Not legal advice. These are counts of accidents recorded by the NTSB, not findings of fault: a probable cause, if any, is in the NTSB's own report. An accident is an event meeting the NTSB's definition, which includes events with no injury. Counts for the latest year are preliminary and are revised as the NTSB closes cases. Claims and deadlines are for your own counsel.
What changed recently?
- 2026-10-29 · NTSB civil aviation accidents by state, year and type of operation, 2008 through 2026: in 2025 the NTSB recorded 1,155 U.S. accidents, 166 of them fatal. (source)
The full log is in changes.json.
What are the limits?
- Only accidents are counted. The NTSB also records incidents, which are less serious events and are left out, and accidents outside the United States, which are left out too.
- An accident is an event that meets the NTSB's definition. Many have no injury, and the count says nothing about who was at fault: the probable cause, if any, is in the NTSB's own report.
- The latest year is partial and preliminary. Counts can change as the NTSB closes its cases.
- The type of operation is that of the first aircraft in the event. A collision between two aircraft is counted once.
- Accidents offshore (the Gulf of Mexico and the oceans) or with no state recorded are in the national record only, so the states do not always add up to the national count.
- Counts are not rates: they do not adjust for how much flying happens in a state.
- Records older than 60 days since their last check are marked
stalein the files until we re-check them. Every confirmed error we fix is listed in the data corrections log.
Found a wrong value? Report an error with the record id and the source that shows the right value.
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