2011: Record Year For Airline Safety 144
smitty777 writes "Unless something bad happens in the next two days, we are on track for having a new record for airline safety. The new record of one death for every 7.1 million passengers beats the 2004 record of one to every 6.4m. The WSJ also notes: 'Another low is the total number of passenger deaths; as of today that number stands at 401. Though it was lower in 2004, when 344 passengers were killed in commercial aviation accidents, that year saw 30% fewer passengers as well as far fewer flights. Western-built planes have fared best, with one major crash per 3 million flights, the best number since the International Air Transport Association began tracking crashes in the 1940s. When factoring in other types of airliners, the crash rate is about two per million flights. We are also in the midst of the longest period without a fatal airliner accident in modern aviation; nobody has died in an airliner since an Oct. 13 propeller plane crash in Papua New Guinea. The previous record was 61 days in 1985.' Russia, and counties linked to it, are the only areas that saw a drop. 2011 also seemed to break the record for unusual airline travel events as well."
Great (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that they have safety nailed down, maybe in 2012 they can do something about forcing passengers to choose between getting groped or irradiated.
We are also in the midst of the longest period wit (Score:4, Insightful)
No. We are not. We are always in the end of it.
note that this even includes some sketchy airlines (Score:5, Insightful)
This includes everything commercial, even ex-Soviet states flying 40-year-old planes with questionable maintenance practices, and the total deaths are still only 401.
Re:How does it compare (Score:3, Insightful)
> How does it compare to rail/car/ship travel?
Airplanes are much, much faster.
"Hello, airplanes? Yeah, it's blimps. You win!"
Statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you really compare annual statistics from a low probability event like a plane crash to other years to say that one year is safer than another? If a single Airbus A380 crashed tomorrow, it could triple the number of fatalities for this year (from 400 to 1200), but does that really make this year 3 times more dangerous than it was yesterday? And since that accident was only a day away from 2012, if there are only 400 accidents in 2012 does that make 2012 safer than 2011 when the difference is based on a single accident?
If plane crashes happened every day, and this year there were 1000 crashes versus 2000 for last year, then that seems more meaningful. Likewise, combining years into decades seems like it would show safety trends, but if a single accident can skew the annual statistics so wildly, it doesn't seem reasonable to compare by year.
Re:How does it compare (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think my fear of the TSA or the government it serves is misplaced. I'd say it's pretty well-founded.
Re:How does it compare (Score:4, Insightful)
If velocity is distance divided by time, and you're using the curb-to-curb distance and the curb-to-curb time (from the time you enter the airport to the time you exit the airport at the other end), then airplanes are not so quick for shorter distances.
This is what makes high speed rail faster than airplanes for distances up to about 400 miles.
The original question was, "How does [flying] compare to rail/car/ship travel?" And the answer given was, "Airplanes are much, much faster." But that is not always true.
Re:Great (Score:4, Insightful)
Fair enough. :) That used to be my reason, until they kept escalating the dangerousness of the equipment being used.
I just spent a few days in the hospital, and got dosed with probably as much radiation as I should be exposed to in a year. At least at the hospital I know they're generally monitored, but they have failures too [nytimes.com]. At least the hospitals will eventually figure out they have errors. They also aren't hitting millions of people per year, and only checking to make sure they get an image back once a year at best. It reminds me of the fluoroscopes [wikipedia.org], except they're hitting virtually everyone that travels.
I've asked TSA agents about the people they've caught. So far, none. At one airport, the agent told me that he heard about someone at an airport 100 miles away that was caught carrying a gun in her purse, but he couldn't confirm it.
I was early for the first flight of the day at another airport. I had a good conversation with an agent there. We were discussing the futility of their jobs. There are so many ways to accomplish the same general idea (mass destruction). The TSA having their high visibility job simply means that most likely If a terrorist did attack, they wouldn't use a commercial airliner.
For $500k you can get a working airliner. [aerotrader.com]. You can squeeze in 20 tons of your favorite explosive (say 2,500 gallons of diesel fuel, and 20,000 pounds of fertilizer), and put it wherever you want. Knowing that bad guys intending to commit a crime aren't the most law abiding individuals, you can knock the price down to $0 on the aircraft if it's stolen.
But why an airliner. They need specialized training to operate. How about a boat [wikipedia.org]. Or a truck [wikipedia.org]. Or why bring the explosion to the target, when there are so many other choices. An abandon building with gas service could be deadly [wikipedia.org]. It doesn't need to be the building though. Natural gas could be pumped into a sewage system, but is less than ideal since it's lighter than air. Propane on the other hand could be catastrophic for a large area.
I think the only reason the gov't doesn't hire me as a scenario designer is, I'd give them way too many things to worry about. It's easier to focus on "bad guy wants to get on a plane", and it creates the illusion of security, where lots of civilians have to endure the worthless security checks. Roughly 7 in 10 attempts by the FBI are missed when they've covertly audited the TSA's security. But sure as hell, they still want to touch my penis.
Re:nice (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Except for no, that really wasn't his goal, well at least on not any realistic time scale. His operated on the "think locally, act globally" scale. His real objective was to drag the US into a war in the middle east in order to use their presence as a pretext to grabbing power in the middle east, which is why the bulk of Al Qaeda messages were about events in the middle east and not the US(they would always make anti-US statements because that is what grabbed media attention and helped their recruitment numbers)
And to a certain extent he was right, the attack provoked the US into wars in the middle east, but then again predicting Bush would do something stupid is sort of like predicting the sun will come up tomorrow, it doesn't take a whole lot of insight.
However his prediction that most of the muslim world would rally behind him was deeply flawed. They weren't exactly happy with the US, but sort of realized that what Bin Laden was doing was throwing a rock at a hornets nest then jumping in front of the hornets to show how much they are protecting everyone. While people get pissed at the hornets, they are also not very happy with the dude that threw the rock.