Airline Safety

The recent story recently regarding the Southwest Airplane that lost cabin pressure due to a hole being ripped in the roof made all the news outlets. This made me do a little digging. According to the Bureau of Statistics there were 10 million flights by US and Foreign Air Carriers in 2010 in the United States alone. While anytime there is an incident it makes news, and justifiably so, the incident percentage is relatively low. There is no way to make air travel 100 percent safe all the time. There will always be incidents but with the massive amount of government mandated  inspections, regulations and rules it is safer than vehicle traffic. People forget that you are sitting in a chair with anywhere from 50 to 300 people in a metal tube 30,000 feet in the air traveling at 600 mph. To assume nothing will ever happen is either extremely naive or plain stupid.

Don’t get me wrong I travel a lot and I want that mechanic to check every bolt on the plane and have 2 more follow behind him. But with all the passenger airlines taking off and landing daily, not to mention Cargo flights, Charter flights, Private, Government and Military, the number of incidents is really low. Some countries have better records than others. I remember a flight taken in 2006 on a small airline in Europe that we had to make room for cargo in the cabin, and yes there were live animals. All of our luggage was stored in bins at the rear of the plane and during the flight the stewardess was going through the bags. The take off, flight and landing were rough and all of us were amazed we made it. While there are still a few flights like that in developing countries the majority of flights are safer than your average commute in any large city anywhere in the world. For some statistics on accidents you can check out The Aviation Safety Network. As for me I will keep flying, try not to worry to much about it and order another scotch in flight, and maybe some of those little peanuts.