It's hard to get your hands on raw statistics and numbers of crashes
for the last fifty years. However, air travel seems to be getting
safer.
In 1998, for example, there were 14 million commercial airline
flights carrying 615 million passengers. There were zero crashes and
zero fatalities. In 1999 and 2000 there were less than five in each
year.
In a Forbes online article, Boeing, said that it is 22 times safer
to fly than it is to drive on a per-mile basis. Fewer people have died
in commercial airplane accidents over the past 60 years than are killed
in U.S. auto accidents over a typical three-month period.
Boeing also says the following: The risk of being involved in a
commercial jet aircraft accident where there are multiple fatalities is
approximately one in three million. To put this in perspective, you'd
have to fly once every day for more than 8,200 years to accumulate
three million flights.
Of course, Boeing has its own agenda, but for the most part these stats sound pretty good!
(published on 10/22/2007)
