When a plane crashes, not everyone is a casualty
The tragic airplane crash in Lagos piloted by an American was not typical. The reason: It killed all passengers aboard or 153 people. Contrary to popular opinion, that fact in itself is highly unusual.
"True or false: When a plane crashes, everyone dies? If you’re like most people, you answered true," said Ben Sherwood, a senior broadcast producer of NBC Nightly news and a frequent writer on airline topics.
It’s no wonder even veteran flyers assume that is the case since there are regular stories about plane crashes were there everyone aboard is killed such as the 1998 EgyptAir 990 diving into the Atlantic Ocean with 217 on board. No survivors.
In the latest crash, safety authorities have confirmed that at least 153 people perished when Dana Air flight 0992 crashed into a residential building in Ishaga, a neighborhood near Murtala Muhammed Airport. The McDonnell Douglas MD-83 was on its way from the capital Abuja when it crashed into the two-story building. The number of casualties on the ground remains unclear, but state-owned Radio Nigeria puts the number at 10, according to wire services.
One dangerous consequence of the "Myth of Hopelessness" raised by veteran air writer Sherwood is that when people believe there’s nothing they can do to save themselves, they put themselves in even greater peril.
So what the chances of dying in an airline crash?
In the aviation safety field, this is known as Q" death risk per randomly chosen flights.
Arnold Barnett of MIT, a one-time nervous flyer, has the answer:
When you get on your next jet airplane, your chances of being killed—your Q—is one in ninety million. That means you could fly every day for the next 250,000 years before you would perish in a crash.
No matter how frequently you travel, your risk of death remains the same: one in ninety million.
Even if you somehow ended up in a plane crash—a remarkably unlikely if—your chances of dying are unbelievably small.
"Believe it or not, the survival rate in plane crashes is 95.7%," Sherwood wrote.
The National Transportation Safety Board analyzed accidents over a seven-year period. They found that even in the most serious crashes, more than three-quarters of the passengers survived.
"Contrary to public perception," the board concluded, "the most likely outcome of an accident is that most of the occupants survived."
Barnett said "the good news is that safety seems to be increasing all over the world, and that’s the most important metric of all."
So does nervous flyer himself feel better or safer or has this statistics cured his fear of flying?
Not entirely, he laughingly told Sherwood, but it definitely helps.
By David Wilkening
David
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