[AnthonyMouse]

You're assuming the existing expense of making air travel safe is not reducing the quantity of air travel done.

Imagine it was as easy to become a pilot as to get a driver's license, there were no flight plans or restrictions on where people could take off or land and a 500MPH jet could be purchased for $150,000 because there would be less regulatory overhead and more competition in aircraft production.

Affluent people would be commuting by jet. There could easily be ten times as many air miles traveled or more.

[thaumasiotes]

If you want to "reason" that way, take into account that (1) if people started dying from air travel at high rates, they'd do less of it; and (2) societies with much higher death rates have no problem growing anyway, as they compensate with higher birth rates.

[AnthonyMouse]

> if people started dying from air travel at high rates, they'd do less of it

That doesn't seem to stop people from driving cars.

> societies with much higher death rates have no problem growing anyway, as they compensate with higher birth rates.

That's just survivorship bias. Why would one cause the other? There were also societies with high death rates and low birth rates which for the obvious reason no longer exist.

[thaumasiotes]

> There were also societies with high death rates and low birth rates which for the obvious reason no longer exist.

If you claim to be worried about extinction of the human race, you'll have to consider all societies, not just the ones with pathologically low birth rates. A tiny group of people committing suicide has zero effect on the overall human population.