Aviation Safety - What Are the Odds?

Your plane takes off and you're on your way. Business trip? Vacation? Family visit? Whichever it is your thoughts are far away. Suddenly the plane hits turbulence. Your hands tighten on the armrests, knuckles turning white. It feels like you're holding the plane up by the armrests. Feverishly you wonder, am I about to die?

Your stomach flip-flops as the plane hits a downdraft. Now you know the plane is about to crash. This is it, you think, the end of the line. The plane finally rolls to a stop after landing. With a sigh of relief you get up from your seat, feeling that you've beaten the odds. But what are those odds really?

Your odds of dying in a plane crash

FAA aviation safety requirements regulate airplane maintenance, pilot sleep hours vs. flying hours, closest approach distances, etc. US flight safety has reached enviable levels, and the odds of dying in a plane crash are extremely low.

PlaneCrashInfo.com reports the odds of dying in an airliner crash are 0.089 per 100,000 flight hours. The odds of your dying in a 1 hour flight are less than 1 in 1,000,000.

Those odds are averaged for all airlines, including those with the worst safety records. The odds of dying in a flight on one of the 25 airlines with the worst safety records are about 1 in 724,000. Fly with one of the 25 safest airlines and your odds improve to less than 1 in 10,000,000.

If you average one round-trip flight per year (on the safer airlines), your lifetime odds of dying in a plane crash are less than 1 in 66,000. Even an "air warrior" flying round-trip every work-day for 30 years, has a lifetime risk under 1 in 787.

Are those good odds or bad odds?

National Safety Council data show the one-year odds of dying in an automotive accident as an occupant of an on-road motorized vehicle are about 1 in 12,300. This translates to lifetime odds of about 1 in 158.

The odds of dying in an automotive accident as a pedestrian are 4 times lower than as a vehicle occupant. This doesn't mean pedestrians are magically 4 times better protected than people riding in a car. It's simply a result of most car crashes not having pedestrians involved.

Fly the average number of hours and your odds of dying in a plane crash are more than 100 times lower than your odds of being run over by a vehicle, and more than 400 times lower than your odds of being killed riding in a vehicle. Even air warriors are 500% more likely to die in a motor vehicle and 25% more likely to be killed walking.

So why are you afraid of flying?

Besides the obvious issue of being suspended miles above the ground with no way of simply pulling over and getting off, there's the issue of control, or lack thereof. When you're the driver, or at least know him or her, you have a (false) sense of control. Flying in an airliner you don't even know the pilot, let alone how good he or she is.

Does the lack of control make flying dangerous though? Let's compare the odds of dying in a plane crash then with another risk completely beyond our personal control. Based on NASA estimates, the odds of a civilization-ending asteroid hitting Earth within a human lifetime are about 1 in 12,500. That's over 5 times more likely than your lifetime odds of dying in a plane crash.

The bottom line about aviation safety

With all the safeguards in place in US aviation, commercial flying has become one of our safest activities. Your odds of dying in a plane crash are lower even than the odds of a dinosaur-killer asteroid hitting the planet within your lifetime.

What's more, over the past few decades, in cases where a plane carrying 10 or more passengers crashed, PlaneCrashInfo.com data shows about 1 in 3 of those passengers survived. If despite all this you still don't feel safe, see the resource box for a link to a long list of airlines that have never had a fatality, some with decades of flying under their safety belts.

A final thought in parting - the real risk is that you try to avoid all the ways the world can get you, you miss out on all of life's pleasures, and in the end you still die. As my grandmother used to say, "Ever since they invented death, nobody is safe in this life."