Is there any way to figure out the odds of a plane crashing with a pro sports team on board in say the nect 25 years?
I always wondered if something like this could ever happen, I actually believe George on Seinfeld thought of this as well.
Just curious…
Well it happened to Manchester United.
Here is a touching article about it.
It also happened to an Argentian rugby team, too, when they were crossing the Andes, IIRC.
Here is a chart listing the odds of a crash under various scenarios:
Advanced-world domestic jet 1 in 8 million
U.S. Commuter 1 in 2 million
Developing-world domestic jet 1 in 500,000
International jet within advanced-world 1 in 5 million
International jet between advanced-world and developing-world 1 in 600,000
International jet within developing-world 1 in 400,000
Quite right Alive by Piers Paul Reid tells the story, although I doubt that they were professional back then.
ESPN offered a partial list of plane crashes involving sports teams three years ago.
They also published a more complete list in 1999 which includes athletes from non-team sports (Payne Stewart, Davey Allison) and other active athletes killed when travelling separately from their team (Roberto Clemente, Knute Rockne).
The NFL, NBA and NHL have all made public each leagues disaster plan to rebuild a team in cases like this. Major League Baseball has refused to discuss the subject, but is believed to have such a plan.
Can anyone summarize/link the various disaster plans to rebuild teams ?
I haven’t seen any US teams’ disaster plans, but Man United’s was pretty simple- buy another bunch of athletes.
Given the odds of any particular jet crashing (do most pro teams take commuter planes or commercial jets?), all one needs to do is calculate the number of flights the team would take over a year, and multply the two to get the chance of a crash, per year.
My guess is that the odds of a U.S. Pro sports team being in a crash are higher than the average traveller (since they take so many flights), but still quite low, since the overall odds are low.
If you expand the field to include international pro teams, or college teams, or both, I imagine the odds would likely be quite good, especially over the next 25 years.
Just to clairfy my question above: I’m interested in a league’s plan (NHL,NBA, etc) to restock a team in case of a plane crash/disaster. I realize that Steinbrenner has a relatively simple plan to restock the Yankees – ie: $$$
The disaster plan which Major League Baseball doesn’t talk about is relatively straightforward. The team would draft players from other teams. Like other supplemental drafts, each team would protect X number of players, and if a player is selected from their unprotected list, the team would get to protect another player. I don’t know how many players a team could draft (as opposed to having to call up players from the minor leagues) but the theory is pretty simple.
Let’s try to get some ballpark figures for baseball.
Each team plays half of its 162 games on the road, or 81 games. They usually play about 3 games in a series in each city. Therefore there are about 27 road series per season. If there were round trips to each city, then the teams would make 54 flights a year. However, the actual figure will be less, because teams visit several cities on the same road trip as a circuit (rather than always returning to their home city) and there are some intra-city games. On the other hand, there will be some extra trips for the post season. So lets just say that the average team flies about 50 times per year. Since there are 30 teams, MLB teams make about 1,500 flights per year.
Using Q.E.D.'s figures for risk on domestic flights, 8,000,000/1,500 = 1 chance in 5,333 per year that a crash will involve a MLB team. The odds may be somewhat higher for the charter or corporate flights the teams actually use. However, the odds of a crash happening in the next 20 years are only about 1/266.
Risks for NHL and NBA teams may be roughly similar, since although they play fewer games the series are shorter, and they are about the same number of teams. Risks for the NFL will be lower since they play so few games.
As a guesstimate, lets say the 4 major league sports make 5,000 flights per year all together. Then the aggregate risk becomes 1/1,600 per year. So there is only 1 chance in 80 that a plane crash will involve any major league team in the next 20 years.
Why? getting the munchies?
<ok, totally tasteless joke, but it is the first answer that popped into my mind seeing the title…>
Only 2 members didn’t die. One was sick and couldn’t go to the game they had just played, and the other decided at the last minute to ride home in his parent’s car instead of flying. Most of the other people on the plane that weren’t team members were parents.
Don’t the odds double because of the chances of a plane cashing into a team on the ground? ;j