EASA has released its annual aviation safety figures, recording 116 deaths across civil aviation in 2025.

The figure comes from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency's yearly safety review, the document through which the regulator consolidates accident and fatality data for European civil aviation and, where applicable, global operations of relevance to its remit. The 2025 count of 116 fatalities stands as the headline number in this year's publication.

EASA publishes the annual review to give regulators, airlines, manufacturers and insurers a common evidentiary base for assessing where risk is concentrated in the system. Fatality totals from the agency feed directly into its safety management priorities, informing which operational domains — commercial air transport, general aviation, helicopter operations or emerging sectors — attract regulatory attention and resource in the following planning cycle.

A single-year death toll of this magnitude, concentrated as such figures typically are in a small number of accidents rather than distributed across the fleet, will shape how EASA and its national counterparts calibrate oversight for 2026. For operators and lessors, the safety record also carries commercial weight: insurers price against it, and network planning in affected segments responds to any regulatory or investigative fallout.

The full breakdown in the EASA review — covering accident counts, fatal accident categories and the distribution of deaths between commercial air transport and other sectors — provides the detail behind the headline figure. That granularity determines whether the 2025 total reflects an anomalous event or a trend the regulator must address through rulemaking, airworthiness directives or targeted oversight.

EASA's next steps will depend on what the detailed review identifies as the principal risk drivers behind the 116 fatalities, and operators should expect the agency to translate those findings into its safety priorities for the year ahead.