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

nice

[Anonymous Coward]

im sure we can attribute this to the TSA, right? right?

Re:nice

[antifoidulus]

The stated goal from bin Laden was the destruction of the capitalist monster that is the United States. He wanted 330 million people dead, regardless of our position or purpose in this country.

Except for no, that really wasn't his goal, well at least on not any realistic time scale. His operated on the "think locally, act globally" scale. His real objective was to drag the US into a war in the middle east in order to use their presence as a pretext to grabbing power in the middle east, which is why the bulk of Al Qaeda messages were about events in the middle east and not the US(they would always make anti-US statements because that is what grabbed media attention and helped their recruitment numbers)

And to a certain extent he was right, the attack provoked the US into wars in the middle east, but then again predicting Bush would do something stupid is sort of like predicting the sun will come up tomorrow, it doesn't take a whole lot of insight.

However his prediction that most of the muslim world would rally behind him was deeply flawed. They weren't exactly happy with the US, but sort of realized that what Bin Laden was doing was throwing a rock at a hornets nest then jumping in front of the hornets to show how much they are protecting everyone. While people get pissed at the hornets, they are also not very happy with the dude that threw the rock.

How does it compare

[mehrotra.akash]

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

Re:How does it compare

[tylernt]

One of the big problems with the TSA is that they scare people into taking more dangerous forms of transportation out of a misplaced sense of fear

I don't think my fear of the TSA or the government it serves is misplaced. I'd say it's pretty well-founded.

note that this even includes some sketchy airlines

[Trepidity]

This includes everything commercial, even ex-Soviet states flying 40-year-old planes with questionable maintenance practices, and the total deaths are still only 401.