In 2024 so far (to the best of my memory), we had one crash on a runway in Japan, but zero casualties (on the jet – several casualties on the other plane – not a jet). And a door fell off a plane in Alaska with zero casualties.
There are always a small number of bush plane or private small plane casualties every year, but they don’t count against jets either.
The Alaska door plug incident didn’t have casualties only because it just so happened nobody was sitting in the two seats directly adjacent to the door plug.
Edit: the point isn’t to dispute whether somebody would have died or not, but to not let a stroke of luck downplay the severity of the actual issue
Seatbelts are also a thing, assuming you actually follow the safety recommendations.
We are not talking fatalities, we are talking casualties. You cannot convince me that an explosive decompression at 16k feet won’t cause serious injury at the least.
Edit: seat belts are designed against the forces of severe turbulence, not explosive decompressions. Assuming the seat belt actually holds, all the forces are applied against the single point of contact the belt has with the midsection of the passenger. Reminder that the forces were enough to torque two seats, rip the padding off the closest seat, and ripped the shirt off a nearby passenger. I actually think there is a decent chance there would’ve been a fatality should anybody have sat in the closest seat.
