troyunrau, 1 year ago

No. Commercial passenger Jets are pretty much the safest form of travel that exists by almost every metric. Comparing them against three seater Cessnas that Billybob from Oregon uses for sight-seeing expeditions is not fair. You don’t compare SUVs to bicycles when talking about safety because they both have tires.

Note that military aircraft are also not included. There were a lot of people who died in Jets this year in military contexts. But would you call that fair when putting together the safety metrics?

What about passengers that suffered heart attacks while flying in a commercial plane? Actually, that might be an interesting example, but not in the context of this article. (Tangent: there’s probably a metric here. If you have a heart attack in a vehicle, what are the odds you’re driving, and what are the odds your heart attack causes multiple fatalities as a result. But your travel time to hospital and survival rate might be higher as a passenger – it takes more time for a plane to make an emergency landing. I’d bet those numbers come in close, but it’ll depend on the metric used.)

You always need to pick a reasonable metric. In this case, commercial passenger jets is a good one, because it’s the largest group.