Worker Fatalities
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Transportation Worker Fatalities and September 2001

Among those who died as a result of the terrorist attacks in September 2001 were 33 airline employees on 4 aircraft. Eight of the deaths were pilots; 25 were flight attendants. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in its Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries accounts for air transportation workers in several categories. Only airplane pilot and navigator fatalities, captured within a broad category called “Technical, sales, and administrative support,” are disaggregated in published BLS data. Flight attendant deaths are included, among others, under “public transportation attendants” within BLS’s “Service occupations” category. Thus, the BLS data in tables 2 and 3 represent an undercount of actual transportation worker fatalities. BLS recorded five public transportation attendant fatalities in 2000. According to National Safety Board preliminary fatal accident data, there were 10 crew fatalities in 2000 of which 4 were flight attendants.

SOURCE: National Transportation Safety Board, “Fatal Accidents, 2000 Preliminary Data for All Operations Under 14 CFR 121 and for Scheduled Operations Under 14 CFR 135,” available at http://www.ntsb.gov/aviation/Table11.htm/, as of Dec. 19, 2001.