The Associated Press has released an analysis of government accident data showing that the past ten years have been the safest period in the history of air travel in this country, News Republic reports. With 153 fatalities, the past ten years have been even safer than the previous ten-year period.
"I wouldn't say air crashes of passenger airliners are a thing of the past,” Todd Curtis, director of the Airsafe.com Foundation and a former safety engineer with Boeing, told the AP. “They're simply a whole lot more rare than they used to be."
The AP analysis identified five main reasons for the rise in safety:
- Changes in technology and procedures that improve on past mistakes.
- Information sharing technologies that better identify safety trends.
- A more experienced workforce that makes better crisis decisions and mentors younger employees.
- Luck- larger airplanes mean that a single accident can have a dramatic effect on safety numbers, so chance continues to play a role.
Read the full story here.