zlacker

>>jnsaff+(OP)
In 1986, I lived a mile or so from where a mid-air collision sent a DC-9 crashing into a neighborhood, which killed 15 people on the ground: https://www.presstelegram.com/2016/08/30/cerritos-plane-cras...

Every time I board a plane, I think what a crazy thing I am doing, but then I remember that I could be safe and snug in my house and still be in a plane crash.

>>sys327+BM1
> Every time I board a plane, I think what a crazy thing I am doing, but then I remember that I could be safe and snug in my house

To be fair, statistically, your living room is far more dangerous than the cabin of an airplane.

>>dmd+PN1
Forgive me, but by what possible metric: miles traveled in it?

>>coddin+bP1
> by what possible metric

Micromorts, maybe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort

>>flobos+oQ1
The relevant bits here - deaths from all causes in the US are 22 micromorts per day. Lower in the article, airline travel is listed as 1 micromort per 1000 miles travelled.

Background risk of death from non-natural causes are listed as 1.6 per day; many of those non-natural causes do not exist in an airplane cabin (e.g. you probably aren't going to be murdered because no one has anything more effective than a plastic spork, you probably aren't going to kill yourself, you probably won't be hit by a car). So it seems reasonable to say that being inside an airliner cabin is safer than being outside of one.

Also, this is probably confounded by many super-old or super-sick people not choosing to fly - if you are in an airliner, you are probably healthier than the average person.

>>rogerr+bU1
> e.g. you probably aren't going to be murdered because no one has anything more effective than a plastic spork

Except for the occasional murder who has access to the flight controls.

>>tshadd+b82
“Occasional” implies a rate at least several orders of magnitude higher than actual.

>>rogerr+R82
if it happens once a decade occasional sounds right

>>JChara+1q2
So far this year alone, there have been 31,000,000 flights. https://www.airportia.com/flights-monitor/. So somewhere around 300,000,000 flights per decade.

If someone said an event happens “occasionally”, I would expect it to be significantly more frequent than 1/300,000,000.

Powerball lottery odds are 1 in 292 million. I wouldn’t say that I “occasionally” win the lottery when I buy a ticket!