[6d0debc071]

Okay:

Going by wiki - which I suspect isn't a complete list, but still:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents...

In 2013 there were 12 accidents concerning aircraft, none of which were related to terrorism.

In 2012 there were 12 accidents relating to aircraft, none of which were related to terrorism - there was also on attempted hijacking

In 2011 there were 25 accidents concerning aircraft, none of which were related to terrorism.

In 2010 there were 26 accidents concerning aircraft, none of which were related to terrorism. - One of these bore some similarity to this incident, in that the aircraft was lost on radar. - Pamir Airways Flight 112, vanished from radar ten minutes after takeoff. It was eventually found 12 miles from Kabul.

In 2009 there were 21 accidents related to aircraft. - There were also two terrorist incidents, one hostage taking and one attempted bombing.

Air France Flight 447 was one of the planes lost that year, it was lost over the Atlantic Ocean and it took two years for the wreckage to be found and the black boxes recovered.

It vanished 'without a Mayday call, a witness, or even a trace on radar [...] Flight 447 seemed to disappear from the sky'

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/magazine/mag-08Plane-t.htm...

Okay, so what's the point of reciting all this?

Going by those figures, a little over 3% of the incidents involving aircraft were terrorism-related. And none of those, to my knowledge, resulted in deaths, or even significant injury.

1) Accidents are frequent (and I suspect the list I've got is out by one or two since I didn't count it automatically, and somewhat incomplete in any case) - the number of planes in the sky pretty much ensures that.

2) Terrorism related to flights seems relatively rare, and most commonly relatively ineffectual as compared to things like messed up landings.

3) Planes have vanished from radar before without foul play, (and seemingly in similar conditions in the case of 447.)

And that's roughly in line with what we'd expect before seeing evidence. Unless you know that the two are strongly related, the way to bet is that the intersection of two low probability events is going to be vanishingly small.

So, while there's no solid proof that it isn't terrorism in this case, that's the way I'd bet if I were a betting woman ^_^

[czep]

You're not going back far enough! Why would you think 5 years is enough to draw conclusions? If you look back 15 years (long enough to include 9/11), then 50% of commercial aviation fatalities are due to terrorism.

[6d0debc071]

50% of commercial aviation fatalities being due to terrorism, well maybe if you're counting the people on the ground, (I'm not interested enough in fatalities to do the maths on that.) Disregarding, the ground fatalities however:

There were for planes in 9/11. According to the list I last quoted, there were:

92 people on a Boeing 767200-ER

65 people on a Boeing 767-200

64 people on a Boeing 757-200

44 people on a Boeing 757-200

=> 265

If the fatalities are 100% in this most recent crash, it almost exceeds the 9/11 aviation fatalities by itself. Excluding this most recent incident - and just going from the wikilist again - you only have to go back to May 14th 2012 to exceed those casualties:

2012

[...]

May 14 - 15 dead

June 29 - 6 dead

September 12 - 10 dead

September 28 - 19 dead

October 7 - 3 dead

November 30 - 6 dead

December 25 - 1 dead

December 29 - 5 dead

2013

January 29 - 16 dead

February 13 - 5 dead

April 29 - 7 dead

July 6 - 3 dead

July 7 - 10 dead

August 14 - 2 dead

October 3 - 15 dead

October 16 - 49 dead

November 17 - 50 dead

November 29 2013 - 33 dead

2014

February 16th 2014 - 18 dead

(+ 18 33 50 49 15 2 10 3 7 5 16 5 1 6 3 19 10 6 (- 21 6))

=> 273

So, I find it highly unlikely that 9/11 does account for 50% of the commercial aviation fatalities in the last 15 years since it would account for less than 50% in the last 2 if it had occurred in those years.

-------------

As for the other points -

I'm interested in incidents concerning aircraft, and not the number of fatalities in general. The question isn't what is your chance of dying in a terrorist attack, the question is what sort of figure can we hang off this plane vanishing being due to a terrorist attack. 9/11 is four aircraft - from that point of view it doesn't change the figures much.

I could go further back and increase the confidence level but I don't really see the point. This isn't the sort of scenario where a more precise number seems likely to matter, even if I were out by an entire order of magnitude, it would make little difference. It would still be the thing to bet against it being terrorism.

I might bother to get a more precise number if I were putting money on it, but that would largely be a matter of knowing how much money to bet rather than the direction of the bet.

Basically, if you want a more precise number, you'll have to do the work yourself.