2011: Record Year For Airline Safety

smitty777 writes "Unless something bad happens in the next two days, we are on track for having a new record for airline safety. The new record of one death for every 7.1 million passengers beats the 2004 record of one to every 6.4m. The WSJ also notes: 'Another low is the total number of passenger deaths; as of today that number stands at 401. Though it was lower in 2004, when 344 passengers were killed in commercial aviation accidents, that year saw 30% fewer passengers as well as far fewer flights. Western-built planes have fared best, with one major crash per 3 million flights, the best number since the International Air Transport Association began tracking crashes in the 1940s. When factoring in other types of airliners, the crash rate is about two per million flights. We are also in the midst of the longest period without a fatal airliner accident in modern aviation; nobody has died in an airliner since an Oct. 13 propeller plane crash in Papua New Guinea. The previous record was 61 days in 1985.' Russia, and counties linked to it, are the only areas that saw a drop. 2011 also seemed to break the record for unusual airline travel events as well."

Comments

How does it compare

[mehrotra.akash]

How does it compare to rail/car/ship travel?

Car travel versus air travel

[hawguy]

I'd like to see the statistics on the number of extra fatalities due to extra car travel by people who are so fed up with TSA security and airline travel in general that they don't want to fly. I know that on a recent vacation, I drove the 1000 miles because I didn't feel like subjecting me and my family to airport security.

I know that statistically it was less safe, but realistically, it was more fun and less stress - no one got felt-up by airport security or had to stand in an x-ray machine, we didn't have to pair down our wardrobes to what would fit in a carryon (or risk having it lost on the way there), no one stopped us from bringing sunscreens, lotions, or our favorite beverages on the road. We even brought a couple bottles of our favorite wine to enjoy at our destination and didn't need to put it in gorilla-proof packaging that can survive checked baggage handling.

Oh, and it was cheaper, including 2 overnight hotel stays. It took more time, but to me, vacation starts when the family is together and on the way, not just when we get there.

Re:Car travel versus air travel

[hawguy]

But it COULD have been far easier to fly, and you could have had more time at your destination. Quite honestly, being locked in a tin can, strapped in against potential impact, bombarded by the din of the engine(s) is not hat I call "vacation" or "quality time." It's even less so when I am in charge of the flight.

To each his own. I'm not sure if you were talking about a car or a plane when you said "locked in a tin can" - when we're driving, we have a lot of freedom - when we're hungry, we stop off at a real restaurant with freshly prepared food, not a $10 "meal" that's been sitting in a warmer for 3 hours where I have to choose between beef and chicken . And a full-size restroom. When we get tired of driving, we can pull into a rest area and let the kids run around and play in the grass. If we see a sign for "Worlds biggest ball of twine", we can go check it out if we want to. While we're driving, the kids can practice their reading, or we play 20 questions, or one of many other car games. Oh, and I enjoy driving, especially when I have no urgency to get somewhere - I go with the flow of traffic, take my time and stay relaxed.

Imagine a world without the TSA - you arrive 45 minutes before your flight, your checked backs go straight into the cargo hold, you hang around for 10 minutes at the gate before boarding, your flight lasts 1/10 the time as your car travel, and you often arrive at your destination before the next mealtime. Sure, it's cheaper to drive if you have a large group (you're only paying for gasoline and wear/tear once), but the main convenience of flying is - or should I say WAS - time in transit.

If air travel was still like that, it's likely that we would have flown - we could have brought the kids favorite foods/beverages on board, we wouldn't to wonder if putting children through an x-ray scanner is worth not having to explain why a complete stranger is touching them in inappropriate places, we would't have to stop and take off their shoes before they walk through a metal detector and then have to search for a seating area to put their shoes and belts back on. The safety factor alone makes air travel attractive, but not when it means inconveniencing or embarrassing my children when forced to go through invasive checkpoints.

It also sounds like your travel took you two days, vs about 1/2 a day for flying. For wage slaves, that's three extra days of limited "vacation" time, for the self-employed, it's three days of opportunity cost (about $3000 for me). BTW - I did a 900 mile trip via air recently - for three people it cost us the same as gas (+/-10%), but it was a discount carrier to a common destination.

The other drawback with airline travel is that it's on the airline's schedule, not mine. If we flew, we would have left on a 10am Wednesday morning flight (the 4pm Tuesday flight would have meant another half day off work, the 6am Wednesday flight would have meant waking up at 3:30am to get to the airport on time). It was a 12 hour drive (excluding stops)...we got on the road at 5pm Wednesday just after I got off work, and drove until midnight. I had planned on stopping around 10pm, but traffic was light, I wasn't tired, and the kids were sleeping, so we kept going to an upcoming larger town). The next day we got on the road at 9am after breakfast and got to our destination around 2pm - just in time for hotel check-in and maybe an hour after we would have gotten to the hotel if we had taken the flight. So while driving did cost more time, it didn't really eat into our vacation time. On the way back we left Tuesday afternoon instead of flying home on Wednesday morning, so we lost 1/2 day of "vacation", but only a few usable hours, most of the time we spend driving would have been spent in the hotel room.

The cost savings was not a major factor in choosing to drive, but it was significant savings - we paid around $300 in gas (round-trip), $80 each for two nights of hotels whil