Flight Statistics
Statistics on Flying Safety
Although the fear of flying is primarily an unconscious fear and has no rational basis, some people are comforted by statistics about the accident profile of commercial airlines. Flying is extremely safe. It’s actually much safer than driving a car by almost ten times.
Here are some statistics from www.planecrashinfo.com that might be comforting to some people that are included with the CD when you buy it. If the statistics aren’t sufficient, then you can learn to enjoy your flight through the CD Learn to Enjoy Your Flight.
Odds of being on an airline flight which results in at least one fatality:
- 1 in 4.25 million (25 safest airlines) — 1 in 386,000 (25 unsafest airlines)
Odds of being killed on a single airline flight
- 1 in 6.3 million (25 safest airlines) – 1 in 543,000 (25 unsafest airlines)
Odds of being killed on a single trip:
- Airliner: 52.6 million to 1
- Automobile: 7.6 million to 1
Although about 60% of most flying time takes place at cruising altitude, only 6% of accidents occur at cruising altitude.
While turbulence can be a problem, the vast majority of turbulence injuries are caused by passengers NOT wearing seat belts! Buckle up through your flight.
(©Source: BACK Associates and PlaneCrashInfo.com accident database, 1981 – 2004. Reprinted with permission.)
According the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), airline accidents are rare, with the odds of death (as opposed to an accident) about 1 in 7 million, as calculated by Professor Arnold Barnett of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. These odds can be looked at like this: if you were to fly once a day on a randomly chosen flight, you would fly 19,000 years without a fatal crash.
Your chances of being involved in an aircraft accident are about 1 in 11 million. On the other hand, your chances of being killed in an automobile accident are 1 in 5000. Statistically, you are at far greater risk driving to the airport than flying on an airplane. However, the perception is that you have more control over your fate when you are in your car than as a passenger. Experience shows otherwise considering that over 50,000 people are killed on the highways every year.
Pilots typically fly out of such bad weather conditions before they occur.
Doppler radar has been installed at the major airports to detect the kind of conditions that produce wind shear and other. When wind shear is reported, pilots can wait until those conditions pass or go to an alternate airport.
Is flying getting safer or less safe today compared with 10 or 20 years ago?
In the last fifteen years or so, the fatal accident rate for passenger aircraft has not significantly changed. What has changed is the number of flights flown around the world, more than doubling during that same time. While fatal events can happen in any part of the world, the rate of fatal events is higher with airlines from developing countries. For example, while the U.S., Canada, and western Europe account for over two thirds of all airline traffic, from 2000 to 2005 only one quarter of all fatal events occurred in those countries or involved airlines based in those countries.
