The plane truth about flying

An airline pilot has now offered reassurance to nervous flyers after penning a blog which discusses the facts surrounding the topic.

An airline pilot has now offered reassurance to nervous flyers after penning a blog which discusses the facts surrounding the topic.

Published Feb 19, 2013

Share

London - Air travel has never been safer, the latest figures show, with fewer accidents and fatalities in 2012 than for nearly 70 years.

Although there were 23 crashes worldwide involving commercial airliners, resulting in 475 deaths, it was the safest year since 1945 – when there were far fewer flights, America’s Aviation Safety Network said.

More than half those fatalities came in two crashes, one in Nigeria when 153 were killed and one in Pakistan where 127 died.

In the United States, where there are ten million flights a year, there has not been a fatal crash for four years.

The last was on February 12, 2009, when a plane crashed as it prepared to land in snow at Buffalo, New York state, killing 49 people on board and one on the ground.

It was blamed on pilot error. Before that, the last fatal US crash was in August 2006.

Advanced navigation, improved safety standards, and more reliable planes and engines are the key factors in making flying one of the safest ways to travel.

Researchers said flying has become so reliable that a traveller could fly every day for 123,000 years before being involved in a fatal crash. The chance of being involved in one in the US is now one in 45 million. - Daily Mail

Related Topics: