Statistically, air travel is now safer than ever, with one fatality per 13.7 million flights, says US research

WASHINGTON, Sept 20 — It has never been safer to get on a plane since the advent of commercial air travel, according to US scientists. While this may seem unlikely when aircraft incidents keep making the news, research reports that the risk of death is one in 13.7 million. And some destinations are safer than others...

Anyone who’s scared of flying knows the score. Your heart races, your palms get clammier and clammier, and your mind can’t stop thinking about every possible thing that might go wrong. Despite that, you’re nonetheless determined to face your fear for the sake of going on that much-awaited vacation. But what if scientists had the right statistics to calm your nerves? And not just any scientists, but those at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), whose studies are authoritative in many fields, including aviation.

According to research published in August in the Journal of Air Transport Management, US scientists claim that the risk of death each time a passenger boards a plane has roughly halved every decade over the last half-century, ie, from 1968 to 2017. For the period from 2018 to 2022 — the focus of this research — this risk fell at the same rate. “The risk of a fatality from commercial air travel was 1 per every 13.7 million passenger boardings globally in the 2018-2022 period — a significant improvement from 1 per 7.9 million boardings in 2008-2017 and a far cry from the 1 per every 350,000 boardings that occurred in 1968-1977,” reports an MIT news release.

It could be argued that this figure may be skewed insofar as this study period includes the Covid-19 pandemic. But the researchers clarify: “Although the pandemic caused convulsions in airline operations, it caused no deviation from the trend under which global passenger death risk from accidents and deliberate acts dropped by about 7 per cent per year.”

So, when you board a plane, you have a one in 13.7 million chance of not getting home. However reassuring this statistic may be, it will do nothing to calm fears of turbulence, for example. Moreover, the figure remains a general average.

Indeed, not all countries can boast the same level of safety. According to MIT, low-risk countries for air travel are those of the European Union, Japan, the USA, China, Norway, Australia, New Zealand and Montenegro.

And while it’s by no means risky to choose these destinations, the risk is slightly higher in South Africa, Qatar, Jordan, Singapore, Taiwan, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, the Philippines and Thailand. But rest assured: the probability is still only one death for every 80 million passengers.... — ETX Studio