Recently we have seen a few airline incidents such as an engine fire sparked by plastic packaging wrap, a tire lost shortly after takeoff and a plane veering off the runway: These are among the eight incidents that have occurred over the past two weeks. While no injuries or fatalities have been reported, the mishaps have generated headlines and stoked rising anxiety about aviation safety among federal officials and passengers alike.
Although these reports are true, they do not mean that air travel is not safe. Incidents related to air travel get a disproportionate amount of media coverage and these incidents do not report that the percentage of such incidents is negligible when compared to the no. of passengers or the no. of flights taking off every day Globally.
I’ve analyzed air travel safety based on publicly available data and have created 4 visualizations to highlight why air travel is still one of the safest modes of transport.
Let’s first compare the no. of fatalities in air travel compared to the total no. of passengers who undertook air travel.
Fig. 1- Fatalities vs total no. of passengers per year
As you can see, the no. of passengers are in billions and the fatalities are mostly in single digits. This means that the maximum percentage of fatalities in year 2006 is 0.000002217%.
Next, let’s look at the fatalities per 100K departures of flights and 100K flight hours.
Fig. 2- Fatalities per 100K departures and 100K flight hours
As you can see above, the highest no.s in year 2009 are 0.536 fatalities per 100K departures and 0.295 fatalities per 100K flight hours.
Now let’s check how air travel compares to road travel in terms of fatalities. We’ll look at the fatalities per 100 million miles of air travel Globally vs road travel in US alone.
Fig. 3- Fatalities per 100 million miles of road travel vs air travel
As the trend highlights the fatalities in road travel are consistently more than the fatalities in air travel. I only had the road fatality data for US. If we can compile the road fatality data for the whole world the differences would be even greater.
Finally, to put things in context let’s check the total fatalities while traveling by road in US and while traveling by air Globally every year from 2002 till 2021.
Fig. 4- Total fatalities during road travel vs air travel per year
As evident above, an average of more than 100 people a day died on US road alone between 2003 and 2022. This means more people died during road travel in 2 days, on average, than the number of people who died during air travel from 2003 to 2021.
Based on the above analysis, I think air travel is safe and that the negative reports in the media are not based on the facts. Although there have been recent incidents, I’d hesitate to label air travel as unsafe when compared to the no. of passengers and no. of flights plying across the world.
According to the NWS and CDC [1] data, a person’s chance of dying by a lightning strike is 1 in 9 million, whereas chance of dying in a plane crash is 1 in 50 million!
In Anthony Brickhouse’s words- “If you look at the numbers, you’re more at risk to have an accident driving to the airport than you are flying at 38,000 feet”. [2]
I’d let you decide for yourself to figure out if the media reports are true and based on fact, or just a campaign without any factual basis.
References:
[1] Lightning Strike Victim Data | Lightning | CDC
[2] Worried about how safe it is to fly? Here’s what the experts have to say | CNN; Anthony
Brickhouse, a professor of aviation safety at Florida’s Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Data Source- Aviation Safety Network > Statistics (aviation-safety.net)
Data Source- https://www.bts.gov/content/us-air-carrier-safety-data
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