Flying in America Has Actually Never Been Safer

U.S. airlines have gone nearly 15 years without a fatal crash—and it’s not just luck. The revolution in the skies began with an innovative program that has become a model for the rest of the world.

By Ben Cohen of The WSJ. 

I used the book The Economics of Public Issues in my micro classes. It had a chapter on the safety of air travel. It mentioned that flying was 15 times safer than driving in terms of deaths per mile traveled.

Although I think things might not be that bad. If you are thinking of going to Dallas from San Antonio even if you fly you still probably need to ride in a car going to and from airports. That is often in heavy city traffic that might be dangerous. If you drive all the way to Dallas and don't speed, wear you seat belt and drive in the day during good weather, you probably improve your safety quite a bit. Also if you are not drinking and driving.

Anyway, here excerpts from the article:

"The biggest U.S. commercial airlines have now gone nearly 15 years without a fatal crash, which is something of a miracle itself, as there have been more than 100 million flights and 10 billion passengers since then."

"flying across the sky is safer than walking across the street. Airplanes produce fewer deaths per mile than cars, ferries, trains, subways or buses—and the chances of dying in a crash are roughly the same as getting struck by lightning while reading this sentence. 

The country’s safety record would have sounded not just incredible or inconceivable 15 years ago, but completely insane.

“I never would’ve believed it,” said William Voss, the former head of the Flight Safety Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group."

"The Federal Aviation Administration’s self-reporting programs that encourage airline operators to come forward without fear of retribution helped slash the rate of fatal accidents on U.S. airlines by such large percentages that the industry had to figure out new ways to measure safety."

"The last fatal crash involving a U.S. carrier was in February 2009, when a Colgan Air commuter flight went down outside Buffalo and killed all 49 people on board."

"Since that crash 15 years ago next month, large U.S. airlines have suffered two fatal accidents that killed two people. Not two fatal accidents a year, like the 2000s, or two per million flights, like the 1960s. Just two."