Flying high is still a safe option

THIS HAS been an extraordinary year for air travel, to say the least. Yet, incredibly, 2001 is still on target to end well below the decade's average annual fatality figures for the aviation industry. The average is 1,246 and the toll so far this year is 851. Given that the total killed in road accidents in Britain alone is more than three times that number, it is still much less risky to travel by plane than by car.

The last four months have witnessed a catalogue of appalling disasters. First were the 11 September terrorist attacks on the US, with 265 deaths on board the four aircraft involved.

The Scandinavian Airlines accident in fog at Milan Airport - almost unnoticed among other world events at the time - added 104 more. That was followed by the blasting of a Russian airliner out of the sky by a Ukrainian missile, killing all 78 on board.

In New York, an American Airlines Airbus crashed soon after take-off and 260 died. The Crossair accident in Switzerland killed 24. Other much smaller, easily-overlooked incidents included the helicopter crash in Nepal that killed a Nepali princess and five others. But the business of flying had been getting safer and safer before 11 September. The first six months of 2001 were the safest ever, with 114 fatalities in 13 incidents involving commercial airliners.

This was despite an ever burgeoning number of flights, anxieties about over stressed air traffic control, and a passenger load estimated at two billion a year and climbing.

The statistics may sound good but flying will always have the extra sense of insecurity that separates it from other modes of travel. It stems from a complete sense of powerlessness that is now more potent than ever.

At least in a car, sitting within hand's reach of the ground, there is the illusion of being in control. But the air is an alien environment; there is nothing remotely feathery about the human physique and left to our own devices we would descend through the clouds like greased wardrobes.

For frequent flyers who fear flying, the statistics should be reassuring. It may also serve your purposes to zero in on some of the data from incidents before 11 September to ascertain where in the world it might be more sensible to take the train - by far the safest form of land transport.

Some carriers and some regions have a worse record than others. In general, Africa, Asia and North America are more accident prone, although the greater tally in America is partly due to the far greater number of flights.

In terms of causes of incidents, pure mechanical failure-features pretty low down in the analysis of last year's crashes. By far the biggest factor is human error, blamed for 70% of incidents, followed by technical faults (9%) and then, in decreasing order, mechanical failure, weather and air traffic control.

Weighing up the odds

ONE reassuring, although rather meaningless, statistic is available at www.amigoingdown.com, which calculates 'personalised mortality statistics' on any route you choose to key in 'based on information that the aviation authorities publish'.

Thus, for example, the chances of dying on the Heathrow-Amsterdam Schiphol route when flying with BA are a happy one in 53,926,923. But a hypothetical flight with Cubana from Jakarta to Kabul is rated at 1 in 58,388, which amigoingdown describes as 'not good'. For the moment, at least, that is not a journey that many people are likely to make.