Commercial aviation has suffered its deadliest year since 2018 after the Jeju Air Co. disaster in South Korea and last week's downing of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane, reported Bloomberg News on Monday.

Onboard passenger plane fatalities this year jumped to 318 with the two recent crashes, data compiled by Cirium showed. That's by far the highest death toll since more than 500 people died in 2018, a year marked by the first of two Boeing Co. 737 Max crashes.

"This year started and ended with tragedies in Japan and South Korea during attempted landings, among the most dangerous phases of flight," noted the report. "Fatal aviation accidents remain very rare, and one major incident can suddenly turn a statistically safe year into one of the worst."

"The recent spike falls into the margins of unpredictability," Darren Straker, a former head of air accident investigation units in the United Arab Emirates and China's Hong Kong, was quoted as saying. He suggested airline crews could be better trained to respond to so-called outlier events.

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