I read somewhere (citeable it is not) that people have an intuitive sense and remove themselves from a dangerous situation subconsciously. The example provided was that many plane crashes/train wrecks have less than full/average person capacity on board. Any truth to this? Am I reading too many stupid grocery tabloids?
The worst single-plane crash in history happened in 1985 with the loss of 520 people.
So yes, it does happen. I suppose you could go through all aircraft accidents and determine the ratio of full airliner accidents to empty airliner accidents, but it’s easier for you to not worry about it. The possibility of an accident under any circumstances is incredibly low, lower by an order of magnitude than the possibility of you dying in a car accident while driving to the airport to catch your flight.
Even if the plane isn’t full, it doesn’t mean that people “removed themselves instinctually” from it. The only real determination of that would be if the last-minute cancellation rate was higher than normal (and that would probably not mean all that much: people might cancel because of bad weather). Planes often have empty seats simply because they didn’t have enough passengers interested in traveling on that flight.
Another relevant data point would be the amount of flights that are full. But either way, the theory is unbelievable. (The danger sense theory, I mean, not the thing about supermarket tabloids.) I don’t know if it counts as selection bias, but I have that feeling almost every single time I fly. I always get on the plane, and so far it hasn’t killed me.
And of course every single person who does miss a flight that crashes either says afterward that they had a premonition or a “funny feeling” or the reporter makes up the quote to make the story sound better. Ex post facto selection bias.
I bet you can’t name the last commercial jetliner crash in the U.S.
[spoiler] It was American Airlines flight 587 from New York to San Juan on November 12, 2001 shortly after 9/11 (extremely odd crash details if you ask me). It was at virtually full capacity and all 260 aboard were killed. The last 5 years have been oddly quiet in that regard
American Airlines Flight 587 - Wikipedia [/spoiler]
An interesting Wikipedia chunk, dealing with very down-to-earth reasons for escaping death: Pan Am Flight 103 - Wikipedia
I have strong doubts about the concept expressed in the OP. I don’t deny that people can subconsciously take in details and then unknowingly fuse them into a “hunch” or “intuition”, but what details would one possibly pick up on to let them know a plane’s going to crash? Assumedly if such details existed there would be a way to purposely recognize them and prevent these plane crashes.
What was odd about 587? The First Officer (flying pilot) placed stress on the vertical stabilizer exceeding it’s design engineering via excessive rudder pedal inputs when he encountered wake turbulence from the previous departure. IIRC from the NTSB report, he had done the same thing in simulator training and was advised against it. Here’s the full report, if you’d like to read it. Warning-large .pdf
Not all that odd. The rear vertical stabilizer, made of a laminar composite, failed due to excessively vigorous attempts to correct for turbulent wake. Although rear stabilizer failure is extremely rare (stabilizer loads are small compared to those on the wings), on this particular aircraft the stabilizer had demonstrated repeated delam failures at the joint, which were “repaired” by essentially clamping the layers together with a series of large carriage bolts. (I can’t find an image online but the number of bolts through this thing is ridiculous.) The excessive low-cycle high-load fatigue from pilot action combined with the the reduced strength at the joint caused the stabilizer to snap off whole.
Despite the nasty surprises in 2001, it was, by number of fatalities and number of total catastrophic aircraft crashes, rather a red letter year for commercial aviation overall. 1984 and 1993 show no major airliner crashes; while five years in a row may seem “oddly quiet”, it may be also a result of greater scrutiny and no small amount of luck.
As for the OP’s premise, you’d need to compare the late cancellations on crashed flights to cancelations or loads on the same route on other dates. I doubt you’ll find any significant statistical anomolies, especially once you account for the small sample size of actual failures.
Stranger
The plane carrying Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Richie Valens was full. In fact, there was a coin flip to determine which of the tour group got on it. Not a large plane but full nonetheless. I don’t think Waylon Jennings psychically managed to lose the coin toss.
(This actually wasn’t the worst plane crash in the US that day.)
I have read the reports. Aviation is my passion. What I meant by odd is that wake turbulence, while very real, should have not been that strong at that point especially for another large aircraft. Combine that with the fact the the tail just completely failed as the result of it which is extremely rare and you have what I call odd. The plane was also fly-by-wire so it wouldn’t have been that difficult for software to prohibit those type of pilot inputs. The standard explanation involves a string of very unusual circumstances.
Good ole Scarebus, use the rudder lose the tail.
Nice design boys.
Flight 587 was heading for Santo Domingo, not San Juan. Just a minor nitpick.
Carry on.
If you’re the last passenger to board, and the stewardess tells you there’s room for one inside , don’t get on.
I think it is very likely you are reading too much into tabloid ‘science’.
If humans had this ‘sense’, why do so many die in situations like tsunamis?
How about a gremlin ripping off pieces of the plane? 
A little common sense can be used in deciding wheter to make a flight on extreme weather conditions (specially on smaller planes) or with airlines of dubious maintenance standards. Appart from that using hunches or “statistics”* is pretty useless.
** Reminds me of a joke about a man in the psychiatrist telling of how terrified he was of flying on a plane for fear of a bomb going off in it, the doctor suggested that he carried a bomb himself on board because the probabilities of having TWO bombs in the same plane at the same time where almost zero.*
Most planes are not full. The 9/11 hijackers deliberately picked planes flying at a time when they probably wouldn’t have many passengers, figuring there would be less people to keep quiet.
And most of us don’t know that, because most people only fly during holiday seasons when the planes are full. Which I think is why the myth sounds plausible.
I’m guessing the financial difficulties facing airlines could actually have helped - by forcing older aircraft out of service, reducing the average age of fleets and presumabling improving reliability and safety.