The fear of flying is one of the most widespread phobias in the world. But to reassure those who are assaulted by irrational anxiety at the mere thought of getting on a plane, comes a study from the MIT – Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published in the Journal of Air Transport Management.
The study shows not only that the plane is statistically the the safest means of transport absolutely, but also that the security in the sky has progressively increased in the last 50 years. In practice, today’s flights are about 39 times safer than those of half a century ago. As a result, the risk of death related to commercial flights has drastically decreased in the last decades and in the period 2018-2022 was equal to 1 for every 13.7 million passengers embarked
Encourage data on aviation safety
This represents a marked improvement compared to the period 2008-2017, when the risk was 1 in 7.9 million, and an impressive jump compared to the years 1968-1977, when the risk was 1 in 350,000 boardings. A positive trend that has lasted for more than fifty yearswith an estimated annual improvement of about 7% and a reduction in risk that halves every decade.
Arnold Barnett, an MIT professor and co-author of the study, compares these advances to “Moore’s Law”according to which the computing power of microchips doubles approximately every 18 months. Similarly, the safety of commercial flights seems to be constantly improving, with a drastically reducing the risk of mortality every decade. “We have a sort of aerial version of Moore’s Law,” observes Barnett, underscoring the importance of these improvements in making air travel ever safer for passengers around the world.
The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic
The study also analyzed the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on aviation safety, separating this aspect from the general long-term safety trend. Barnett and his team estimated that between June 2020 and February 2021, before the vaccines were launched, there were about 1,200 deaths in the United States associated with the infection from Covid-19 that occurred on passenger planes.
On a global scale, between March 2020 and December 2022, approximately 4,760 deaths were linked to the transmission of the virus during flights. These data, however, represent an exceptional phase, they do not undermine the general improvement in aviation security observed in recent decades.
Constantly improving over time
The researchers analyzed the risks associated with commercial based flights data from the Flight Safety Foundationthe World Bank and the International Air Transport Association. While there are many metrics to assess these risks, Barnett believes the number of deaths per boarding is the most “defensible” and understandable statistic.
This data really answers the simple question: how likely are you to die if you have a boarding pass? According to updated estimates by Barnett, security has steadily improved over time, with a significant drop in deaths on boardingwhich today is, in fact, equal to 1 for every 13.7 million passengers.
Global inequality
Despite global progress, disparities in aviation safety still exist between different regions of the world. The study divides the countries into three groups, based on their security standards. The states of the first group, including the United States, the European Union, Japan, United Kingdom Australia, Canada and China, showed the best results, with a risk of death from boarding of about 1 in 80 million in the period 2018-2022.
In the second group, which includes nations such as Brazil, India, Malaysia, Mexico, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Turkey and South Africa, the risk is similar, but with some variations. The third group, which includes the rest of the world, recorded 36.5 times more deaths on board than the countries in the first group.
The researchers note that, despite the significant progress, it is necessary to continue work to further improve flight safety business, especially in the countries of the third group. Although they have shown improvements over time, the gap with the nations most attentive to aviation safety still remains very wide.