How Flying Today Is Safer Than At Any Time In The Past

Flying becomes safer with every year that passes.

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) recently released its 2022 global safety report. It showed that, last year, the aviation industry saw a 9.8% decrease in accidents compared to 2020. Fatalities resulting from aircraft accidents dropped 66%. These numbers have fallen despite an 11% increase in total scheduled flights. The ICAO attributes the improvements in safety to the safety commitments shared across the industry.

In fact, the general trend across many years of aviation is that, today, it is safer than ever to fly. According to research by Harvard University, flying in the US, Europe and Australia is actually significantly safer than driving a car. Your odds of being in an accident during a flight is one in 1.2 million, and the chances of that accident being fatal are one in 11 million. Your chances of dying in a car crash, conversely, are one in 5,000.

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Improving safety over time

A 2020 study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) tracked how airline safety has improved over the past decades. In the decade of 2008 to 2017, passenger fatalities significantly reduced compared to the decade before. In that period, the rate was one fatality per 7.9 million passengers boarded onto an airplane; in 1998 to 2007, it stood at one death per 2.7 million passenger boardings.

Go further back, and the trend becomes even clearer. The period of 1988 – 1997 saw one fatality per 1.3 million boardings, and in 1978 – 1987, it was one per 750,000 boardings. Between 1968 and 1977, this narrowed again to one fatality per 350,000 boardings.

Arnold Barnett, author of the paper summarizing the MIT findings, commented at the time,

“The worldwide risk of being killed had been dropping by a factor of two every decade. Not only has that continued in the last decade, the [latest] improvement is closer to a factor of three. The pace of improvement has not slackened at all even as flying has gotten ever safer and further gains become harder to achieve. That is really quite impressive and is important for people to bear in mind.”

Of course, within the data, there are some geographical differences. The countries where passengers will find the lowest risk airlines include the EU, China, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel. Across these countries, the fatality rate in 2008 – 2017 was just one per 33.1 million passengers boarded.

The higher risk airlines came from developing countries, including some in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In these locations, the risk was found to be one fatality per 1.2 million passenger boardings. But even here, the safety culture had improved dramatically, from one fatality per 400,000 boardings in 1998 - 2007.

What’s making aviation so much safer?

There are numerous ingredients that go together to make air travel the safe environment it is today. Flight crew, air traffic controllers and dispatchers all work together to ensure a safe flight, and any changes to the plan are scrutinized by all parties to avoid mistakes.

When you’re on board an aircraft, you can be confident you’re flying with highly trained, certified individuals. In the United States, pilots need to have a minimum of 1,500 flying hours before they can work on a commercial airliner. That’s almost nine weeks of continuous flight! Cabin crew are also vital to aircraft safety, and large portions of their training are related to keeping passengers safe and well on board.

Add to all this is the safety of the aircraft itself. Technology has moved on in leaps and bounds with every passing decade, bringing new equipment and IT to the cockpit and limiting the potential for human error. Engines are built to be more reliable, and redundancy (having a plan B) is factored into every essential system.

Topping all this off are the stringent regulatory environments in which airlines must operate. Organizations like the FAA and EASA oversee all aviation activities, and have strict requirements for maintenance, reporting, training and operations, keeping everyone safe every time they step on a plane.