Air travel : still by far safest means of transport

We hear it, we repeat it, but sometimes have difficulty in believing it, and yet the numbers are there to prove it. Air travel is well and truly the safest means of transportation in the world.

Between 1950, when statistics were first recorded, and today, the total number of passengers has increased 100 fold, whilst the number of accidents involving aircraft exceeding 14-seater capacity has halved.

Comparing the passenger / accident ratio for 1950 with that for 2013, over the last six decades the probability of a ‘plane crash has reduced to 200 times less than what it was; figures which have stabilized since the year 2000.

Today, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), this means that you would have to fly for 6,500 years, non-stop, before running the risk of an accident – if you could live that long.

Of course we can talk about 1970, the deadliest year in history with nearly 2,400 victims, but we can also look at the 2013 figures where just 265 people were killed in ‘planes, whereas, for that same year, in the US alone, motor car accidents caused 120 times more victims. All of which should help us to realise that it is possible to get on a plane without (too much) fear, as will some six billion people in 2030, and even the 16 billion foreseen in 2050.