5 ms·

The duration of the flight can be ignored. Almost all accidents happen during take-off or landing which is why statistics usually refer to the number of passeng

• toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Makes sense. Takeoff and landing are the most critical phases of flight (much less time to correct mistakes).
• wlesieutre 11y ago
  On the other hand, the risk of driving from New York to Boston is drastically different from the disk of driving New York to LA. So if you want to make a safety comparison between different transit systems, looking at deaths per passenger mile makes sense for the big picture. But if all you're looking at is the risk per flight like this, it's like you said, takeoff and landing are where crashes happen regardless of distance.
  • LanceH 11y ago
    If I have to move my piano 120 feet down the street, cars are considerably safer than planes. It's very difficult to compare miles traveled. Even when comparing a cross country trip, how safe am I driving if I come anywhere close to US airline's safety standards: very well maintained car, never drive tired, avoid bad road conditions, etc...?
• dionidium 11y ago
  Yes, thank you for saying this. You'll often see the relative safety of different modes of travel compared using passenger miles. Passenger miles are an important consideration for some modes of travel, but not air travel.