I despise flying. I am going to be doing regular back and forth flying from Seattle to Dallas for the next few months.
It is a direct 3 hr 50 min flight. I have been only flying on American Airlines… But I have been seeing so many things in the news about crashes and air safety… It’s been scaring me, especially since I bring my son along.
But it is the fastest and easiest way to travel, it would take too much out of me to go by train or car every other week.
Does anyone know the actual statistics of which method of travel is the safest? What are the actual numbers for deaths or accidents per year by train or air or car?
Also, is there any specific airline know for their safety? Also, is there a specific time of day or night that plane crashes are more likely to happen?
#1 by Katie on September 12th, 2011
Quote
plane accidents are extremely rare, with the probability of a passenger being killed on a single flight at approximately eight million-to-one. If a passenger boarded a flight at random, once a day, everyday, it would statistically be over 21,000 years before he or she would be killed.
http://www.planecrashinfo.com/rates.htm this will tell You every thing you need to know I hope this helps
#2 by Roger K on September 12th, 2011
Quote
The NTSB maintains tons of data on airplane accidents and has a searchable database that you can use to find incidents, filtered by airline, location, dates, type of carrier (e.g. commercial/private) and a variety of other criteria. All major carriers in the US are of about equal safety. Smaller regional airlines are not quite as safe. If you have a direct flight, then it is unlikely that you will be on a smaller, regional airline that codeshares with a major carrier. That is a good thing.
The main NTSB aviation page is: http://www.ntsb.gov/aviation/Stats.htm
The database search page is: http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/query.asp
To summarize, however:
Each year in the US, about 40,000 people die in vehicle related accidents – that is more than 100 each and every day.
Over about the past 15 years, there have been more than 10 million flights every year. Long term averages are that there are 2.5 accidents that involve fatalities each year. 2.5 out of 10 million. Statistics also say that about 95 people, on average die in plane accidents each year. But, there are years, such as 2002, 2007 and 2008, where there are no fatal accidents on US carriers.
So, cars: 100+ people per day; planes 95 people per year.
Media reports on airplane incidents completely distort the perception of safety. One aircraft accident that kills 100 people will be in the news for a week, with follow up stories for another month. Over that same period of 30 days, 3,000 people will have died in car crashes. The news media never reports on those 3,000 people. Car crashes only get in the news if there is some 50 car pile up, or a van carrying 10 people rolls over – or some other large fatality event.
Every statistical study, regardless of how the statistics are computed, shows that air travel is far safer than other means.
#3 by younosygit on September 12th, 2011
Quote
As Roger K says, air travel is extremely safe in comparison to other modes of travel. While the movie “Rain Man” wasn’t quite right in saying that the Australian airline Qantas has never had a crash, next year will be the 60th anniversary of their last fatal accident, which isn’t bad going. Of course, this information will not be much use to you unless you are flying to/in Australia!