Recent aviation incidents have sparked concerns about flight safety.
On Monday, a Delta jet crashed and flipped, leaving passengers strapped in their seats, hanging upside down. Remarkably, everyone survived the accident, as the Deseret News previously reported.
The Toronto crash was the latest in a series of high-profile crashes and adds to growing concerns over the safety of air travel. But data shows that air travel is very safe — and getting safer.
Recent plane incidents
Here mare the most recent aviation incidents:
- On Jan. 20, a collision between an American Airlines plane and an U.S. Army Black Hawk claimed the lives of all 67 travelers, according to ABC News. The plane was coming from Wichita, Kansas, and was moments from landing at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
- On Jan. 31, a medical transport jet crashed into a Philadelphia neighborhood, killing all six people on board from Mexico, according to The Associated Press. A raging fire ignited by the wreckage engulfed nearby homes, leaving 19 injured.
- On Feb. 7, a small commuter plane carrying 10 people crashed on the ice near Juneau, Alaska. There were no survivors, according to the AP.
- On Feb. 12, a Navy jet plunged into the ocean off the San Diego coast. The cause remains under investigation, according to the AP.
- On Feb, 17, a Delta jet crashed at Toronto Pearson Airport. Everyone on board survived — though more than 20 passengers sustained injuries.
Flying is the safest mode of transportation
According to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, air travel remains the safest form of transportation, as the Deseret News previously reported.
The National Safety Council estimates Americans face a 1-in-95 chance of dying in a motor vehicle accident, while the odds of dying in a plane crash are so rare, they’re nearly impossible to calculate.
The 2024 Transportation Statistics Report from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics affirms that takeaway.
“Transportation incidents for all modes claimed 44,546 lives in 2022, of which all but 2,032 involved highway motor vehicles,” says the report. “There were no deaths from crashes on large commercial airlines in 2023, but several hundred deaths occurred in crashes in general aviation, commuter air, and air taxi services.”
The Federal Aviation Administration has reported that 16,405,000 flights are handled by the FAA yearly and provides service 2.9 million airline passengers daily.
Flying has never been safer
A 2024 study by MIT researchers found that air travel has never been safer. Despite recent headlines, “commercial flight has become roughly twice as safe each decade since the 1960s,” the article said.
Between 2018 and 2022, the risk of death by commercial air travel stood at 1 in every 13.7 million passengers, according to the study. This marks a significant improvement from the previous decade, 2008 to 2017, when the risk was 1 in 7.9 million.
Safety regulations have made a profound impact over the years; in 1968-1977, the risk was 1 in every 350,000, according to the research.
“The chance of dying during an air journey keeps dropping by about 7% annually, and continues to go down by a factor of two every decade,” Arnold Barnett, an MIT professor, said in the article.
What is the aviation industry is doing to improve safety?
The National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration are investigating the recent fatal tragedies to uncover the causes.
Their findings will inform what happens next and hopefully boost trust in air travel in the future, per the AP.
“One good thing that the aviation community does do is it really does learn from its past experiences and past accidents,” Jim Brauchle, an aviation attorney at Motley Rice, told USA Today. “The FAA has implemented or tired to implement a lot of programs where, if you report safety issues, there’s no repercussions for things like that.”