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Arnold Barnett, a statistician at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has studied airline safety, tells NPR that from 2018 to 2022, the chances of a passenger being killed on a flight anywhere in the world was 1 in 13.4 million. Between 1968 to 1977, the chance was 1 in 350,000. "Worldwide flying is extremely safe, but in the United States, it's extraordinarily so," Barnett said. In the U.S., there has not been a fatal plane crash involving a major American airline since February 2009, though there have been a handful of fatalities since then. Brickhouse, who has studied aviation safety for over 25 years, often tells people that the biggest risk of any air journey tends to be driving to the airport. More than 40,000 people are killed on U.S. roads each year. "Aviation remains the safest mode of transportation," he says. https://www.npr.org/2024/03/12/1237262132/why-flying-safe-un.... |
The incident with the 737 door falling off is a good example here: this would have been a fatal incident if this had been a full flight. Thankfully, the seat next to the door was empty that day, so no one got seriously hurt, but it could have been much worse.
It's hard to tell for sure without a reliable source of unbiased data rather than various news stories, but it sure seems that the frequency of incidents (in the US) is rising lately, not falling, and that's not good, it's like the canary in the coal mine. Things need to be fixed before planes start falling out of the sky with spectacularly fatal results because too many deep systemic problems have come together to destroy the safety record that existed before. Instead, too many people want to rest on past successes, saying "look! It's so safe compared to driving!" and do nothing.