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It hasn’t been a great start to the year for aviation safety, with a runway collision at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport and a door seal exploding in mid-air from an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9, making headlines within days of each other, and with four more fatal accidents involving the planes. Regional and business jets in the following weeks.
Boeing, the maker of the 737, came under particular scrutiny once it emerged that the explosion was due to manufacturing problems, and some travelers are now choosing to avoid booking flights on the Max 9 planes.
It’s understandable that anxiety about flying has reached high levels, but is there any cause for concern?
“I don’t think you need to worry,” says Jeffrey Thomas, an aviation safety expert and editor-in-chief of Airline Ratings, which publishes an annual list of the safest airlines.
“Certainly Boeing has had some production issues, and they’re working on them, and that’s not a good look. But the bottom line is there are so many inspections in place now that I don’t think anyone should be concerned.”
“I certainly wouldn’t hesitate to take a Boeing plane.”
Thomas adds that the 737 still has a better safety record than the 747.
“No one would ever hesitate to take a 747,” he says. “One of the things about flying, over time, is that manufacturers and airlines learn from their mistakes, and put systems in place to ensure they don’t make them again. So, statistically, over time, flying becomes safer and more secure.”
In a recent analysis, Airline Ratings identified a list of aircraft that can be considered the safest to fly, having never been involved in an accident resulting in a fatality.
Among them are the Boeing 787 and 777-300ER, and the Airbus A220, A320neo and A380.
The list of the safest airlines in the world is topped by Air New Zealand, Qantas, Virgin Australia, Etihad Airways, Qatar Airways, Emirates, All Nippon Airways, Finnair and Cathay Pacific.
Charlie Tripalo/AFP/Getty Images
The aviation industry says overall safety performance has increased by 48% over the past 10 years.
“Flying is the safest form of transportation,” says Anthony Brickhouse, a professor of aviation safety at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida.
“If you look at the numbers, you’re more at risk of being in an accident driving to the airport than you are flying at 38,000 feet. I tell people, if you get to your flight, the riskiest part of your day is already behind you.
Brickhouse adds that passengers should pay less attention to exactly what plane they’re traveling on and focus on the things they can control, like their personal safety when they board.
“For example, by paying attention during a safety briefing, being aware of where emergency exits are, or not traveling by plane with children on their laps,” he says.
Brickhouse points out that the US Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the Max 9 explosion, and the fact that the plane is back in the air means they have completed all the necessary inspections to make sure it is as safe as possible.
In the Tokyo runway collision, a Japan Airlines Airbus A350 collided with a Dash 8, a turboprop regional jet operated by the Tokyo Coast Guard, killing five of its six crew.
Last year, a series of near-misses at US airports prompted an investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration.
“If you have a trend that keeps happening, unless you make very significant changes, that trend will unfortunately turn into an accident,” says Brickhouse. “And I think it’s really important that we do what we do, which is look at all of these close calls in the airport environment, to learn as much as we can so that we can hopefully prevent that disaster that may be lurking.” .
“Unfortunately, in the Japan Airlines accident, we lost five people on the military plane, but everyone got off the civilian plane. From a safety perspective, we can still find out what went right and what didn’t.
Following the accident, Japan modified some air traffic control procedures, such as having employees constantly monitor ground-based radar systems that alert of possible runway collisions.
However, this has sparked calls for a significant increase in staff numbers, as it is believed the measure will put further pressure on already stretched staff.
NTSB/Handout via Reuters
Safety concerns grew last month when a door plug exploded in mid-air on an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 plane.
The latest safety report from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the trade association for global airlines, indicates that in 2022 there were a total of 39 commercial aviation accidents in the world, with 158 on-board fatalities – the equivalent of one accident every 0.83. Million flights.
“Accidents are rare in aviation,” Willie Walsh, IATA Director General, said in a statement accompanying the report.
“There were five fatal accidents out of 32.2 million flights in 2022. This tells us that flying is among the safest activities anyone can do. But although the risks of flying are very low, it is not risk-free.
“Careful analysis of the trends that emerge even at these very high levels of safety is what will make aviation safer. This year’s report, for example, tells us that we need to put some special efforts into turboprop operations in Africa and Latin America.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) says that in the past 10 years, the industry has improved overall safety performance by 48%.
A study by Arnold Barnett, a professor of statistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, focuses on aviation’s ever-improving safety record. The study, which has not yet been published, is a follow-up to one he released in 2020, but looks at more recent aviation data, up to 2022.
The main finding is that between 2018 and 2022, the worldwide risk of death was 13.4 million – meaning that if you chose a trip completely at random and just took it, your chance of dying in a plane crash or a terrorist act was about one in 13 million.
To put that in context, there is a much greater chance of being killed in a shark attack, or giving birth to quadruplets, than of dying in a plane crash.
This is also a significant improvement over the period from 2008 to 2017, when the risk was one in 7.9 million, and a significant drop compared to the period from 1968 to 1977, when the risk was one death per 350,000 flights.
“In the past half-century, the probability of dying in an airplane accident is now only about 1/38 compared to the levels of the late 1960s and 1970s,” Barnett says.
Jason Redmond/AFP/Getty Images
Despite the concerns, experts say the Boeing 737 has a better safety record than the 747.
However, he shares IATA’s concerns, warning that the world is not homogeneous, and there are regions with a high accident rate, especially developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
“They are down to one death every two million flights now, which is higher than the global average of one in 13 million,” he adds.
Conversely, in countries where the study found it is safer to fly — including Australia, Canada, China, the European Union, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States — the risk drops to one death. In about 80 million ascension.
Barnett adds: “I know people who are afraid of flying, and for some of them this is an intense feeling, but I think that worrying about flying for fear of death is like refusing to go to the supermarket because the ceiling might collapse.” .
When the risk is close enough to zero, Barnett says, we should treat it as zero.
“I don’t think that every moment you walk down the street, you assume that death might be imminent because a meteor might suddenly hit you or something like that. These events are so remote in probability that we simply treat them as impossible. And I think flying, statistically , falls into this category.
