Is Aviation Safer than before?
We all hear everywhere that aviation is the safest form of transportation, and many people, especially pilots repeat it and say it has been proven many times.
However, many people are still scared of flying, they believe it is not the safest form of transportation, and would never board a plane. In addition, there is the concept that once a plane crashes the chances of survival are minimal. With this in mind, I’ve decided to do further research and see if it is really safer than before.
Using a dataset of plane crashes from 1908 until 2019, we get very interesting results when analyzing the data. At first, if we go by the percentage of total fatalities, as shown in the following chart, we see that 2019 has the highest percentage of total fatalities.
This might sound scary because it is telling us that in 2019, we had the maximum percentage of deaths, but as we dig a bit deeper, this is somewhat misleading. Let’s take a look at the total number of crashes per year from 1908 until 2019.
As we can see from the above graph, the number of plane crashes has actually decreased, with an all-time low in 2019. If we do not count the years prior to 1920, since those are outliers, there weren’t as many planes in the 1920s as there are now. When we compare to a scatter plot, we can see the distribution more in detail.
As mentioned before, in the early days of aviation, there were not many planes in the air, so there were not many crashes in the 1920s. As the number of planes in the air started to increase around the 1930s so did the number of accidents, especially in the early years of our data, when there weren’t many planes flying. However, we see a big decline in the late 1990s all the way to 2019 with a small spike around 2015. Therefore, as the number of crashes goes, we can definitely say that we have fewer crashes than before.
Yet, another reason that some people consider flying dangerous is that they think that every time there is a crash, it is imminent that everyone aboard will die. However, I compared the number of people involved in an accident and the number of fatalities per year and shows that it is not always the case, and there is not always a fatality. Below is the visualization that shows the total people involved in accidents vs the number of fatalities.
As we can see, not everyone involved in a plane crash died. However, if we focus our attention on the latest years the difference is less. So, although flying overall has gotten safer, according to this data, even where there are fewer people involved in the accidents, they are parallel with the fatalities.
I’ve also compared total crashes with the number of total fatalities (i.e when the crashes resulted in total loss of life), vs partial fatalities, where the loss of life were not total, vs when there were no fatalities at all, and we see a very important pattern. Let’s take a look at the graph below:
As we can see, the number of crashes always superseded the number of fatalities, however, not many crashes resulted in zero fatalities. This concludes that although we have had fewer crashes in 2019, there is still a lot to do to make aviation safer. Also, in 2019, the difference between the crashes, and total fatalities is less, but this could mean many things. However, we can see on the blue bars, that number of crashes with zero fatalities is steadily low. This means that although flying has gotten safer since there are fewer overall crashes, it is still risky when you are involved in an accident. Overall, although crashes have lessened, it is still risky being in a plane crash and aviation has definitely gotten safer, despite many bad crashes that are seen on the news.
Now, although like any form of transportation, nothing is a hundred percent safe. Aviation has proven to be very safe. However, there are many attributes that go into the safety of aviation. One of them is the different safety regulations agencies of the world, such as the FAA in the United States. Likewise, every country has its own safety agency and laws and they are strict when it comes to safety. This comes from many years of experience. The reason we have so much data about the accidents is that they record everything and act proactively with current data to make aviation safer.
In the beginning, there were not many crashes because there were no many planes, as planes started to become more common, crashes also increased. Although Regulatory agencies started to emerge, such as the FAA in 1958 (FAA.gov) and laws started before that, the 1920s in the U.S, (Aviation Safety Wikipedia), they did not have enough data so aviation crashes were still high for some time. However, as technology advanced, better materials, and better regulations, and strict rules for pilots, crashes diminished. For Example, every pilot must conduct a pre-flight check of the entire aircraft before flying, which although recommended, not many people do the same on cars. The reason being, if a car stalls, one can just pull over, but it is a lot harder to do that in the air.
Pilot training is also strict and difficult, their knowledge tests include aerodynamics, meteorology, and a minimum of 40 hours of practical instructions with an instructor for private pilots, 250 for commercial pilots, and at least 1200 hours for commercial airline pilots. This ensures the pilot has enough experience before flying on commercial airlines. In addition, pilots must have what is called a flight review every two years, and if they have not been flying for a long time, they must perform 3 takeoffs and 3 landings before carrying passengers. As we all know, practice is the key to mastering a skill. Therefore, pilots that follow these rules will rarely get into a situation that will cause an accident, and if there are failures, they should know how to handle the situation.
To conclude, flying has definitely gotten safer over the years, hitting a record low in 2017 for the number of fatalities with only 88, as shown in the graph above, and we can contribute this to worldwide cooperation with safety regulations and pilot training. We must, however, know that not all pilots follow rules, and failures still happen, but overall, it has been safer than the 1970s and 1980s as shown on the graph with a steady decline and minor spikes in the mid-2000s and again declining in 2019.