Flying has never been safer, and continues to improve

Many airline passengers naturally worry about flying. However, commercial air travel continues to become increasingly safe on a global scale, according to a new study led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The study has revealed that the risk of a fatality from commercial air travel between 2018 and 2022 was one per every 13.7 million passenger boardings worldwide. 

This is a significant improvement from the risk of one per 7.9 million boardings in the period from 2008 to 2017, and a remarkable advancement compared to the one per every 350,000 boardings that occurred between 1968 and 1977.

Air travel safety is constantly improving

“Aviation safety continues to get better,” said Arnold Barnett, an MIT expert in air travel safety and operations and co-author of the study.

“You might think there is some irreducible risk level we can’t get below. And yet, the chance of dying during an air journey keeps dropping by about seven percent annually, and continues to go down by a factor of two every decade.”

Of course, there are no guarantees of perpetual improvement; recent near-collisions on U.S. runways have garnered attention, underscoring that airline safety requires continuous effort.

The Covid-19 pandemic may have introduced a temporary new risk associated with flying. The study examines this risk separately from the long-term safety trends, which focus on accidents and deliberate attacks on aviation.

Air travel safety has nearly doubled each decade

Barnett likens the long-term improvements in air safety to “Moore’s Law,” the principle that computing power roughly doubles every 18 months. In this case, commercial air travel has become about twice as safe with each passing decade since the late 1960s.

“Here we have an aerial version of Moore’s Law,” said Barnett, who has contributed to refining air travel safety statistics for many years.

In terms of per-boarding risk, passengers today are approximately 39 times safer than they were during the 1968-1977 period.

Avian safety during the pandemic 

The study also includes a separate finding about the impact of Covid-19, focusing on the transmission of the virus by airline passengers during the pandemic. 

This analysis is not part of the main data, which evaluates airline incidents during normal operations. Nonetheless, Barnett believed it was important to investigate the specific case of viral transmission during the pandemic.

Covid-19 transmission on passenger planes

The study estimates that between June 2020 and February 2021, before vaccines were widely available, around 1,200 deaths in the U.S. were associated, directly or indirectly, with Covid-19 transmission on passenger planes. 

Most of these fatalities likely involved people who contracted the virus from others who had been infected during air travel.

Covid deaths linked to air travel

Additionally, the study estimates that globally, from March 2020 through December 2022, about 4,760 deaths were linked to Covid-19 transmission on airplanes. 

These estimates are based on available data regarding transmission rates and daily death rates, taking into account the age distribution of air passengers during the pandemic. 

Interestingly, older Americans did not seem to fly less during the pandemic, even though their risk of death from infection was higher than that of younger travelers.

“There’s no simple answer to this,” Barnett said. “But we worked to come up with realistic and conservative estimates, so that people can learn important lessons about what happened. I believe people should at least look at these numbers.”

Fatalities outside of the pandemic 

To study fatalities during normal airline operations, the researchers used data from the Flight Safety Foundation, the World Bank, and the International Air Transport Association.

To assess air travel risks, various metrics have been used, including deaths per billion passenger miles and fatal accidents per 100,000 flight hours. 

However, Barnett argues that deaths per passenger boarding is the most “defensible” and understandable statistic, as it directly answers the question: If you have a boarding pass for a flight, what are your odds of dying? This statistic also accounts for incidents that might occur in airport terminals.

Having previously developed this metric, Barnett has updated his findings multiple times, creating a comprehensive view of air safety over time:

Commercial air fatalities per passenger boarding:

1968-1977: one per 350,000

1978-1987: one per 750,000

1988-1997: one per 1.3 million

1998-2007: one per 2.7 million

2007-2017: one per 7.9 million

2018-2022: one per 13.7 million

As Barnett’s data shows, these improvements are not just incidental but represent a long-term trend. While the new paper is more focused on empirical outcomes than on explaining them, 

Barnett suggests several contributing factors, including technological advances like collision avoidance systems in planes, extensive training, and rigorous work by organizations such as the U.S. Federal Aviation Agency and the National Transportation Safety Board.

Disparities in air travel safety 

However, there are still disparities in air travel safety across the globe. The study categorizes countries into three tiers based on their commercial air safety records. 

In the third tier, the fatality rate per passenger boarding during the 2018-2022 period was 36.5 times higher than in the top tier. This highlights that air travel safety varies significantly depending on the region.

The first tier of countries includes the United States, European Union countries, other European states like Norway and Switzerland, as well as Australia, Canada, China, Israel, Japan, and New Zealand.

The second tier comprises nations such as Brazil, India, Mexico, South Africa, and South Korea, where the death risk per boarding was about one per 80 million over 2018-2022.

The third tier encompasses all other countries. While air travel fatalities per boarding in these countries were cut roughly in half during the 2018-2022 period, Barnett notes that while it’s positive they are improving, they could potentially accelerate their progress by learning from the leading countries.

“The remaining countries continue to improve by something like a factor of two, but they’re still behind the top two groups,” Barnett observed.

Impressive rate of improvement 

Overall, Barnett points out that, despite the challenges posed by Covid-19, and considering accident avoidance, particularly in countries with the lowest fatality rates, it is remarkable that air safety continues to improve. 

Progress is never guaranteed in this area, but the leading countries in air safety, along with their government officials and airlines, consistently find ways to enhance flight safety.

“After decades of sharp improvements, it’s really hard to keep improving at the same rate. And yet they do,” Barnett concluded.

The study is published in the Journal of Air Transport Management.

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