Air Safety: End of the Golden Age?
Tables and Figures
Table 1: Passenger Mortality Risk for Various World-wide Jet Services, 1990-1999
Type of Service Death Risk per Flight
First-World Domestic
1 in 13 million
International Within First World
1 in 6 million
International Between First and
Developing World
1 in 500,000
Within Developing-World
1 in 500,000
Notes:
Countries identified as First-World are listed in the text.
Death risk per flight is the chance of being killed on a randomly-chosen (nonstop) flight over the period 1990-99.
Some approximations attend the calculations, and the denominators are rounded off to the nearest half million.
The mortality-risk difference between domestic and international flights in the first-world is not statistically
significant: If major fatal crashes arise under a Poisson process at rate G79 per million flights, then the observed
difference is consistent with short-term fluctuations around the mean of that process. However, the fact that an
observed difference might be construed as a temporary fluctuation does not mean that it must be so construed.
Table 2: Passenger Mortality Risk Arising from Criminal/Terrorist Acts, Scheduled
First-World Jet Services, 1990-1999
Type of Service Death Risk per Flight
US:
Domestic
0
International 0
First-World Outside US:
Domestic 0
International 1 in 2 billion
Table 3: Passenger Mortality Risk Arising from Runway Collisions for Scheduled
First-World Jet Services,
1990-1999
Type of Service Death Risk per Flight
US:
Domestic
1 in 100 million
International 0
First-World Outside US:
Domestic 0
International 0
Table 4: Passenger Mortality Risk Arising from Mid-air Collisions, Scheduled First-
World Jet Services, 1990-1999
Type of Service Death Risk per Flight
US:
Domestic
0
International 0
First-World Outside US:
Domestic 0
International 0
A B
E F
D
C
Figure 1: By Replacing Indirect Prescribed Routings with Straight-Line Paths, Free
Flight Would Keep Some Planes Further Apart