Flying is becoming safer every decade, according to a new study by MIT researchers.
While many people worry about flying, the reality is that commercial air travel is continually improving in safety.
This trend, similar to “Moore’s Law” in computing, shows that air travel has become about twice as safe every ten years since the 1960s.
The study found that the risk of a fatal accident in commercial air travel was 1 in 13.7 million passenger boardings globally from 2018 to 2022.
This is a significant improvement from 1 in 7.9 million boardings during 2008-2017 and a huge leap from 1 in 350,000 boardings in 1968-1977.
“Aviation safety continues to get better,” says Arnold Barnett, an MIT professor and co-author of the study. Barnett is an expert in air travel safety and operations.
He points out that despite the challenges, the chance of dying during an air journey keeps dropping by about 7% annually, continuing to halve each decade.
However, there are no guarantees that this improvement will continue indefinitely. Some recent near-collisions on runways in the U.S. have made headlines, reminding us that airline safety requires constant vigilance.
Additionally, the Covid-19 pandemic introduced a new risk related to flying, which the study also analyzed separately from the long-term safety trends.
Barnett likens the progress in air travel safety to Moore’s Law, which observes that computing power doubles approximately every 18 months. In this case, commercial air travel has become about twice as safe each decade since the late 1960s.
In the 1968-1977 period, the risk of a fatal accident was 1 in 350,000 passenger boardings. By 2018-2022, that risk had improved to 1 in 13.7 million boardings, making air travel 39 times safer than it was in the late 60s and 70s.
The study, titled “Airline safety: Still getting better?” is published in the August issue of the Journal of Air Transport Management. The authors are Arnold Barnett, the George Eastman Professor of Management Science at MIT Sloan School of Management, and Jan Reig Torra, a former graduate student at MIT Sloan.
The Covid-19 pandemic had a temporary impact on air travel safety. The study estimated that from June 2020 to February 2021, around 1,200 deaths in the U.S. were associated with Covid-19 transmission on planes.
Globally, from March 2020 to December 2022, about 4,760 deaths were linked to Covid-19 transmission on airplanes. These estimates are based on data about transmission rates and daily death rates, considering the age distributions of air passengers during the pandemic.
To assess fatalities during regular airline operations, the researchers used data from the Flight Safety Foundation, the World Bank, and the International Air Transport Association. They used the metric of deaths per passenger boarding to evaluate air travel risks. This metric answers the simple question: If you have a boarding pass for a flight, what are your odds of dying?
The findings show a long-term trend of improved safety. Technological advances, extensive training, and the rigorous work of organizations like the U.S. Federal Aviation Agency and the National Transportation Safety Board contribute to these improvements.
However, there are global disparities in air travel safety. The study divided countries into three tiers based on their commercial air safety records. The first tier includes the U.S., EU countries, Australia, Canada, China, Japan, and others. The second tier includes countries like Brazil, India, and South Africa.
The third tier includes the rest of the world. In the third tier, the risk of fatalities per passenger boarding was 36.5 times higher than in the first tier.
While countries in the third tier are improving, they still lag behind the top two groups. Nevertheless, the overall trend shows that air travel safety keeps getting better, even in the face of new challenges like the Covid-19 pandemic.
Despite the ongoing need for vigilance, the leading countries in air safety continue to find ways to make flying safer. “After decades of sharp improvements, it’s really hard to keep improving at the same rate. And yet they do,” Barnett concludes.
