Wow OR, great detective work! You found a whopping one article! Fortunately, the transportation industry has these new fangled things called statistics, that are based on data. As in facts, opposed to someone that is afraid of flying. If you make statements, back it up with facts. Last I heard, your odds are far better of being struck by lightning or eaten by a shark than in an aircraft accident.

Sammy's incident was probably scary, but nothing more. Ever have a flat tire, when you have the fight the car to the side of the road? This would be the flying equivalent.

This is interesting:

Source:
http://www.geocities.com/khlim777_my/ashowsafe1.htm


It has been said that the safety record for commercial flying in the United States is one of the safest in the world. Arnold Barnett, a statistician from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology noted that the death risk was 1 in 2 million in the decade from 1967 to 1976. It is estimated that the risk today is in the region of 1 in 10 millions.

Compare these to the more down-to-earth transportation - the motorways or the railways. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) stated that your chances of being killed in a motorcar accident is 1 in 5,000. If you decide to travel by train, your odd of dying due to a train crash is reduced to around 1 in 400,000. In an airplane, it varies from 1 in 400,000 to 1 in 10,000,000 depending on the reputation of the airlines you are going to travel on.

Here is another better way of explaining the statistics. In 1996, the NTSB came up the statement that scheduled commercial airlines had a fatal accident rate of 0.026 per 100,000 flying hours. Translated very simply, this would show that a passenger would have to fly 24 hours a day for over 400 years before he would be involved in a fatal accident!

The 10-year survey compiled by Dr Arnold Barnett for the period 1987 to 1996 indicated that the mortality risk per flight for International jet in the advanced world was one in five million. That is equivalent to taking a random flight everyday for about 13,000 years (5,000,000 divided by 365 days) to be involved in a fatal crash! In the lesser ranking airlines, the mortality risk per passenger flight is in the region of around 1 in 400,000. Even with this lower rate, you still have to take a flight every day for about 1000 years before you are likely to be involved in a fatal accident! Sounds incredulous?

To convince you further, let’s compare flying to traveling by automobiles. According to National Transportation Safety Board, using 1994 as a year to make these 2 comparisons, scheduled commercial airlines had a death rate of 0.04 per hundred million passenger miles. The same rate for automobile was 0.86. So traveling by automobile is 21 times more dangerous than air travel!

In terms of the number of deaths, the comparative figures are more disturbing. In 2000, commercial airplanes fatalities were only 878. By contrast, five times as many people died in boating accidents and accidents involving bicycles. Nearly 10 times as many people died in swimming accidents and about 41,900 were killed in automobiles accidents!

On ramp, your first example simply showed one of many things that could happen, have happened, and may happen again. However, when one considers the number of flights that have flown worldwide (tens of millions of separate flights) against the number of fuel tank explosions, statistically speaking, you'd be more likely to be hit by lightning. Remember this: nothing, NOTHING, is perfectly safe. Not even flying. However, steps can be taken to make flying as safe as possible. Safety in this business is constantly evolving and improving as new information and technology comes to light and is implemented into the system. This is why it is so safe from a statistical standpoint.

It will never be absolutely 100% safe. Nothing ever is. But it is a safer way to travel than any other form of transport. Without question.

***** happens. On the ground, in the water, up in the air.

Best to bubble wrap yourself and hold your breath until the rapture...gonna be a wild ride.

Todd, that gave me a good laugh! :D

A little bit of an overstatement, no offense. Back 2 years ago, when I was driving 40K miles a year using my red 1986 911.... I had about 12 extremely close calls here in CA traffic where drivers swerved into my lane and I avoided them by either slowing down, speeding up or changing lanes completely... this at freeway speeds of 80mph or more. People in CA drive nuts....and you have to be aware of this at ALL times.... I watch the instep of their drivers side wheels, once they turn in I know that car is coming my way.... I look in the rear view mirror constantly.

Hey im not perfect and one day someone will jam into me....but... to say that one has NO control over traffic is fallacious.... Look, had I been on the cell phone, daydreaming, getting a bj from a girlfriend or something, my car would have surely been totalled in at least 1/2 of those incidents.

Regarding the 'tire blow out and fighting the car'..... happened to me at 90MPH in the 86 911...
Rear drivers side tire blew out all of a sudden but other than a little shimmy the car stayed perfectly centered and I eased over to the side.

If you are paying attention as a driver, you can avoid things......surely airline pilots have and use the same qualities all the time....

Regarding safety of planes, those thing happen...the fuel tank upgrade cost of $100 to $300K seems excessive and prohibitative for most airlines to even consider.

Was watching an investigative show recently where a few planes had crashed in the late 90s
as they suddenly rolled to the right or left and the pilot couldnt figure it out and ended up overcompensating in some manner which caused a crash. FAA couldnt figure out why and it took years for them to discover that a certain hydraulic system would lock up at a particular temperature, but only rarely....they discovered this using tests with dry ice.....it took them years to figure out this flaw in a single part... so it can happen but thankfully it is rare.

coyotes and concrete

depends on your luck...

Sweet Jesus....

Off Ramp now believes the spin that the FAA is putting on the TWA accident....

Well kids, 90% of all the jets flying today have exactly the same fuel tanks and system as the Boeing 747 that went down did. Their blaming it on a fuel tank blowing up is pure BS but then I only worked for Boeing at that time, have flown for 37 years and am an aircraft engineer....

So what was it Joe in your opinion.. bomb? surface to air missile?
A retired Navy helicopter pilot who was flying in that area at that time
swears that he saw a missile.

Sonic,

Personally after all of these years working on and flying airplanes, from single engine to Boeings, and the vast majority of them using exactly the same design if not same exact type of fuel pump and tank system, if there was really a "fuel vapor" problem causing them to explode.... why have not more of them done so? We have hundreds of thousands of aircraft movements every month worldwide and not one additional airplane has had an issue.

Why was residue of explosive materials found on parts of the airplane? As well there was more than one person who saw a missle track and hit the aircraft.

Not one Boeing, McDonnell Douglas or Airbus aircraft "flying the line" right now has been either fitted or retrofitted with this "nitrogen gas vapor system" yet not one additional aircraft has had this issue. When Boeing had an issue with "hard overs" on the rudder on the B737 line, we lost 5-6 airplanes (and the people onboard) in the space of 10 years. Then and only then did they find an actuator issue and solved it.

Who knows what caused it, but there is a very strong smell of a whitewash being preformed here. There is more, a lot more, than meets the eye here.

hey buddy, no profanity on the board. you should know better, you're the moderator, follow your own rules, please .
;)

6. No profanity allowed. Make every effort to express your views without resorting to trash talk.

back to Moderating school for you ;)

statistically, worldwide, 1 plane every 7 years catches fire from a fuel tank explosion.

now that we have overwhelmilngly concluded that airplane travel is not safe, let me just add the following on the topic.

Airplanes have a reverse gear because after they go to the gate to unload the passengers and new passengers get on, they need to back up on the way to the runaway. Otherwise they would be stuck there. isn't this so obvious? geez... do I have to explain everything ?

thank you for reading. I won't charge you this time.

Other than the "Molt Skycar," I will give you $1000 when you show me where the "reverse gear selector" is that backs the airplane up on any commercial airplane.

Strongly suggest that you stick to trying to improve on your "lipstick" thread while trying to slander me as opposed to trying to figure out how airplanes work.

You have concluded that getting out of the basement that you hide in (after unwrapping all the bubble wrap from around your body) is unsafe, and as well anything that involves leaving the house is unsafe.

For you that is probably true. I am getting ready to hop on a jet and take it across the extremely cold North Atlantic to Berlin, then on to Moscow. For me its safer than getting in the car and going to lunch today, especially when the fact that people like Off Ramp are driving on the roads.

Easy. It's the button with the big "R" on it.

actually, bubble wrap is not safe either, you can accidentally suffocate

You mean it's not on the column, by "D"?

Thanks for your enlightenment. You've surely proved your point.:rolleyes:

Hey Joe, I never knew you were an engineer. Aerospace degree?

Right. except on the really old planes, reverse is to the left and then up.

Matt,

Yep, not something that I advertise as am pretty much into the flying part now.

The minute you mention engineering or the like someone wants to stick you into an office and not ready for that just yet. Maybe when I grow up! :) Then I can try to be like Off Ramp!

trust me, when you grow up, you don't want to me like me. I spend too much time behind a monitor and at a desk working for clients. I'd rather have your job and fly planes around the globe. (if only it wasn't for my fear of flying). it sounds very adventurous

:)

Yeah, I know how that goes. I spent some time in our flight test dept, as soon as I mentioned my intention to get my pilot's license they started talking about making me a test or demo pilot. While it would be about my dream job, I can't justify leaving my wife and two kids for weeks at a time. So it's flying a desk for me.