If you are nervous about flying you can comfort yourself with the thought that it's getting safer all the time - unless, of course, you go to Russia or any other of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries.
The Independent Air Transport Association (IATA) has been campaigning strongly to improve air safety - all South Africa's full-service airlines have passed its strict audit to ensure that they follow best practice - and according to its annual report, 2006 was the safest year on record.
There was only one accident for every 1.5 million flights by Western-built aircraft and the rate for IATA member airlines was only one for every two million flights, which makes it far safer than driving to your nearest shop.
For years, Africa was the most risky region to fly over and we are still the second-most dangerous. But most of these accidents involved badly maintained older aircraft, many built in Eastern Europe.
And, even on our continent, the accident rate dropped last year to 4.31 for every million flights and none involved any of the leading international airlines.
In Russia and the CIS states, however, the accident rate was 13 times the global average with 8.6 Western-built jet aircraft lost for each million flights.
So, if you fly there make sure it is with an IATA member airline. However, IATA is still campaigning for greater safety, with air crew trained to avoid landing in bad weather conditions, which cause 43 percent of accidents and a new programme to improve communication in English between pilots and air traffic controllers.
Giovanni Bisignani, its director general and chief executive, has pointed out that the accident rate must be reduced still further, since demand for air travel is increasing at a rate of between five percent and six percent a year.
Our domestic airline market in South Africa still seems to be growing. Low-cost airline kulula.com says it has sold more than one billion tickets online and has carried more than seven million passengers to date. Carl Scholtz, its executive manager for IT, says 80 percent of its seats are sold online and its website gets more than half a million visits each month.
Kulula is a division of British Airways/Comair, which is one of several airlines adding to its route network. It launched a regular weekly flight to Mauritius in November, which had to be supplemented with two more a week during the holiday period.
It reverted to one flight a week in January, but demand has continued to be encouraging and it will launch a second flight, on Wednesdays, from June 27. It competes on the route with SAA, which flies from Johannesburg and with Air Mauritius, which flies from Cape Town and carries SAA passengers under codeshare arrangements.
SA Airlink narrowly avoided a strike by pilots belonging to the Solidarity trade union earlier in April when management agreed to raise their salaries to the same level as those earned by Comair pilots. It would have come at a particularly awkward time for Airlink, which is also increasing its route network by introducing flights to Harare and Lusaka from Johannesburg next month.
The Lusaka service will start with two flights a day and the Harare service with two a week until August when it is planned to increase that, also to two a day.
With all the troubles reported from Zimbabwe it seems a strange time to introduce a new service there, but I understand that Airlink might have lost the air traffic rights obtained last year if it did not use them.
But in addition to this, Rodger Foster, the chief executive, tells me there is plenty of demand from business people for flights to Harare timed to allow return the same day. He says that in spite of the collapse of Zimbabwe's currency plenty of business is still being carried on there, but in US dollars.