I’m sure pretty much everyone has heard that airplanes are a safer mode of transportation. Today on the radio, I was reminded of the two members of Lynyrd Skynyrd who died in a plane crash, and in fact a lot of band members and celebrities have died in plane crashes. It got me wondering how they decided airplanes are safer. What statistic do they base that on, number of deaths, deaths per mile, deaths per trip? Which is safer per average trip?
Some of the statistics can be found in this article.
You’re less likely to get in an accident in a plane. However, I’d say it’s probably a safe bet to state that you’re more likely to *live *through a car crash than a plane crash.
Nothing in that article really proves that flying is safer than driving. More people die in automobile crashes than airplane crashes, yes. People also drive far more often than they fly. I’ve never flown in my life. I do own a motorcycle though, and while there are fewer motorcycle fatalities than automobile fatalities each year, I know motorcycles are still more dangerous.
Using some numbers from that article and assuming that the average person makes an average of two trips in an automobile per day and an average of one trip in an airplane per year, the airplane would be almost 4 times as dangerous per trip. I just came up with those numbers off the top of my head, but they seem reasonable to me. So I’m going to need to see more figures before I’ll accept that airplanes are truely safer.
Aviation enthusiast and perpetual flight student here:
You can’t talk about aviation as a whole with this topic. The accident and death risk is very different for different types of aviation. Commercial jets are incredibly safe. The last large jet airliner crash in the U.S. was just after 9/11 and happened on a New York - Santo Domingo flight with structural failure brought on by extreme turbulence right after takeoff. A few months ago, a regional jet took off on the wrong runway in Kentucky and killed 49 people. There are several million flights a year in the U.S. alone so these numbers are small. It would be interesting to see how many people would have been killed otherwise if they weren’t sitting aboard commercial flights for all that time. It is likely that commercial air travel causes an overall net savings of life overall.
When you get into commuter planes, the risks are only slightly worse. However, small, private planes like those that killed all kinds of entertainment personalities, JFK Jr., and others isn’t in the same ballpark. They are slightly more safe than motorcycles but that isn’t saying that much.
In short, the numbers are wildly different depending on the types of air travel you are talking about. The famous death cases were almost inevitably caused by smaller air travel that isn’t subject to the same types of precautions and procedures of the big airlines. Air travel is inherently safe when procedures are followed at all times but that isn’t always followed outside of commercial carriers.
I don’t think that’s exactly true. I forgot the actual numbers, but a surprisingly high number of people survive airplane crashes. It’s the crashes you hear about where almost everyone dies.
They are if you’re on an airline’s plane.
If the plane is your own plane, or a chartered Learjet, it seems like they’re not.
Be a nice problem to be able to have… dying on a chartered Learjet.
By pretty much every type of statistic (miles traveled, risk per trip, etc), flying large scheduled airlines is much, much safer than driving the same trip. Small commuters are less safe, but still safer than cars. General aviation (Cessnas, etc) falls in between cars and motorcyles - less safe than driving a car, more safe than driving a motorcycle).
One huge issue with Geneal Aviation safety is that most of the planes and pilots are not all-weather rated. This is not a technicality, but rather real, honest limits to thier equipment, and abilitys that boil down to the cold-hard fact that if flying in adverse enough weather conditions, they WILL crash.
When faced with needing to be at work on Monday, it is all too common for a general aviation pilot to convince him/herself that they can get away with flying in poor weather conditions, at night, whatever. If your life is such that you can’t wait out bad weather, DO NOT use a light aircraft as a means of transportation.
A second factor is engine reliability. Due to FAA certification requirements, it is impractical, and in fact nearly impossible to certify a new piston engine design. As a result, the vast majority of the GA fleet is flying on 1930’s engine technology. (grandfathered in as the certification requirements were made impractical) Turbine engines are vastly more reliable, but price themselves beyond the means of most private aircraft owners.
Note that nearly every life insurance policy specifically excludes aviation accidents that are not related to a regularly schedualed commercial carrier.
This is not true. A standard life insurance policy* does not exclude death by private plane.
Being a pilot can result in a premium surcharge, or in some case a refusal to issue, but once issued life insurance does cover death by small plane.
Yes, I am aware that if someone lies about their avaition hobby the policy can be contested, but in that case it is fraud, not avaition that is causing the problem.
*I’m talking about life insurance, not an accidental death rider, or a accidental death policy.
When I sold Harford life insurance, there was a question about whether you were a pilot, and for how long. If you had your license for under 3 years (or whatever), you could either pay a higher rating, or you could sign off that Hartford would not pay off if you died piloting a plane. IIRC, professional pilots for real airlines were not rated up. My buddy signed up a Busch Series race car driver, and he got rated up.
While I see your general point I suspect you’re guessing way low on the number of airplane trips people take. Your estimate is almost certainly completely wrong.
I personally will take 150 separate flights a year, so I’m covering for 149 other people just by myself. A lot of people fly quite regularly. O’Hare in Chicago claims 83 MILLION passengers every year; granting it is very large, there are lots of other very large airports. The top four airports in the USA alone (O’Hare, Atlanta, LAX, and DFW) would account for one flight for every American. The average numbers of flights per American is certainly as least three per capita per year, maybe much higher. The median may be much lower, but the average is driven way, way up by regular business travellers.
In the case of my country, Canada, Pearson Airport in Toronto, by itself, accounts for almost one flight for every Canadian; throw in the other ones and it’s obviously a lot of flights per person.
Besides the points that RickJay brought up, you are also forgetting that the average airplane trip is way way longer distance wise than the average car trip.
My last 6 airplane trips
LAX - Seattle abpout 1200 miles
LAX - Honolulu about 2500 miles
Honolulu - Guam about 3500 miles
And returns on all of the above
6 trips = 14,000+ miles
My last 6 car trips? No where close to 14,000 miles.
Last time I checked the numbers, about 20% of General Aviation accidents involved a fatality. The 2003 Nall Report (.pdf) is here if you want to run the current numbers.
Good point. I wasn’t thinking about those musicians taking small private airplanes/jets. Let’s focus on commercial airlines then, since that’s what most people would take. They probably are safer than cars, but I’d be more satisfied if I could see numbers.
Well like I said, it was off of the top of my head. Honestly, I don’t know anyone that takes 150 flights a year (How do you do that? That’s almost a flight every two days.) nor 1 flight a year for that matter, but I knew some business people fly a lot so I settled on that number. I kind of doubt the average is far over that though. Surely someone has done some statistics on it.
Actually, I didn’t forget. I was thinking of it in terms of if you’re putting yourself in more danger stepping into an airplane or a car for a single trip, not who’s more likely to die in a mile’s distance. However, knowing the miles per fatality would still be a lot more useful than just the number of deaths per year.
In an airplane, you’re most likely to have an accident in either the take off or landing phase and not cruise - so a long direct flight is safer than a bunch of multi-leg, shorter flights going the same total distance.
It’s stuff like that which bollixes up direct comparisons between autos and airplanes.
And for the small, piston-powered general aviation category - the pilot matters more than the airplane. Granted, I’m not rated for instrument flight conditions, but then, I don’t have a need to fly in them, I don’t use small airplanes for commuting, and I have the self-discipline not to fly in bad weather. Other general aviation pilots routinely take risks I would deem completely unacceptable (and I’ve been to a couple of their funerals).
Overall, commercial airlines are safer than cars, cars are safer than single-engine piston-powered airplanes, which are safer than motorcycles.
I think part of it is too, most planes are piloted by professionals. Compare this to riding in a bus. While I’ve heard of bus crashes, I’ve been taking Chicago CTA buses for 15 years and I have never been in an accident. I can only recall one time when the bus even stopped short.
I think to be fair you have to compare pilot and professional drivers to each other and amature pilots and regular car drivers to get a good statistic.
Commercial ventures like airlines and busses have incentives to be safe. I will admit once when I was short money to get my leaky brake line fixed I just kept filling up the brake fluid every othe day which worked till I got paid in two weeks. That’s dangerous a professional wouldn’t take a chance like that. That is another reason for a skewed stat.
It is much safer to fly in a plane than it is to fly in a car.
QtM, who survived one plane crash.
Well, sure. It’s my job; I travel almost every week, and many weeks involve multiple stops. Last week I flew from Toronto to Dallas to Houston to Tampa and home to Toronto.
I’m not even at the highest rank of frequent flier.
Well, we now know that slithering on the hull can cause plane crashes. Have to tell the FAA…