Flying: The Safest Way to Travel
By Sarah Lopez / Published: Jul 09, 2015
Related Tags:Pilots, Aviation News, Avionics & Gear, aviation apps
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According to the Bureau of Transportation, approximately 1.73 million passengers take to the skies on a daily basis. When we take a statistic like this into consideration, it is no wonder that commercial aviation is arguably the most analyzed and monitored form of transportation in the world. Whether it be for business or for leisure, everyday people put their trust in aviation to get them from Point A to Point B in a safe and timely manner.
However, the past year and a half has found the world of aviation thrust into the spotlight more than a few times, and none of them for good reasons. From the disappearance of MH370 somewhere over the Indian Ocean, the suspicious circumstances of MH17’s demise, and most recently in March 2015, the Germanwings French Alps crash. All these incidents have cast an unfavorable view on the modern aviation world, and have produced doubts in the minds of many.
One major consequence of all the negative media attention is that many people have begun to scrutinize the world of commercial flying, and have started to bring up the question: Is flying still the safest way to travel?
“When the sheer numbers are considered, flying is still overwhelming the safest way to travel” states Robert Love, a retired commercial airline pilot of 22 years and a current pilot instructor for Boeing. Love alluded to a study he conducted in the 80’s, in which he found that more people died in their own bathrooms than they did in commercial aviation. Even though many might think that this statistic is outdated, the facts prove that the chances of a person dying in an airplane accident are pretty slim. According to the World Health Organization, a person’s chances of dying in a plane crash is 1 in 10 million passengers, while a person’s chances of dying in a hospital due to a health care error are 1 in 300.
When comparing airplane statistics to those of cars, it is immensely visible that flying is much safer than getting into your car and driving everyday. It is estimated that 1.3 million people die in road crashes each year, with an average of 3,287 deaths per day. “When you take a look at the amount of airplanes that are flying every single day, at every airport all around the world, and take into consideration that we only get a major accident or some kind of problem every once in a while, you can see why aviation is the safest thing that you could find” states Jose Menendez, a FAA certified airplane mechanic with 36 years of experience. However, Menendez also stated that one of the main reasons that flying is so scrutinized is because “when there is an accident, there is usually a large loss of life”, and this brings negative attention towards commercial aviation.
Moreover, expert analysis continues to show that contrary to popular belief and recent headlines, aviation is actually going through one of its safest periods in history. The graphbelow, taken from the Aviation Safety Network, illustrates this point perfectly.
Commercial aviation deaths per year
By analyzing the graph, it is easy to see that while 2014 was not a good year for the aviation world, it was the exception to a trend of decreasing accidents and deaths throughout the years. For instance, in 2013, 265 people were killed in flight accidents, making it the safest year in flying since 1945. Furthermore, 9 of the 10 safest years in flying have been in the past 11 years, showing that as time has gone by, air travel has become more and more safe.
According to Menendez, although accidents such as MH370 and MH17 are tragic to the airplane industry and everyone involved, “they give us the opportunity to learn and make changes in order to make sure these things don’t happen again.”
Commercial aviation has shown itself to be increasingly committed to improving flying due to accidents and near catastrophes. Francisco Martinez, an electromechanic and licensed airframe and powerplant technician for Aero Technologies Inc. stated that when major accidents occur that involve mechanical errors, “we are often trained to change our way of analyzing the airplane parts in order to pass a more rigorous inspection.”
Furthermore, Love also agreed that as a pilot instructor, he is also exposed to new safety protocols when accidents and air disasters take place. “Occasionally there will be a new protocol implemented due to a particular accident. The ones of late really haven’t had any new protocols issued because they’ve determined the nature of the accident and have found that it wasn’t something that we as pilots could control. However, we do deal with this in other cases and instruct air pilots from around the world on what causes many accidents and how to avoid them.”
So if statistics have proven that air travel is in fact getting safer as time goes by, then why have people suddenly shown so much fear towards the skies? This could be explained by something that many psychologists call the effect of the Availability Heuristic, which is “a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to mind”. For instance, when trying to make a decision about a topic, many recent events or ideas might spring into your head, causing you to believe that the probability of such events happening is really higher than it actually is. If we apply this to airplane crashes, then after seeing several news reports about recent crashes and disasters, it is possible for the person watching to make the judgment that plane crashes are much more common than they really are, causing them to incorrectly evaluate the safety of air travel.
From the Wright Brother’s first flight in 1903 to the increased automation that we are seeing in aircraft nowadays, it can be clearly observed that air travel has steadily improved and continues to improve with time. According to Love and several other experts, the aviation world will only continue to improve with time and the evolution of technology, to the point where commercial aircraft will “literally fly themselves.” With this in mind, there is hope for a brighter future for the world of commercial flight, a future that according to the numbers should have less accidents and safer travel.
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Works Cited
Health Care Headlines. Going Into a Hospital: More Dangerous Than Flying. (2012). PT in Motion,3(11), 14-14.
"RITA BTS Transtats." The Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Web. 9 July 2015. <
"Is 2014 the Deadliest Year for Flights? Not Even Close." CNN. Cable News Network, 28 July 2014. Web. 13 July 2015.
Cherry, Kendra. "Availability Heuristic." About Education.com. Web. 15 July 2015.