AH DOES THE MATH
What do more
flights change?
A small chance per boarding accumulates across more boardings. Explore the arithmetic while keeping its meaning in view.
Count the boardings.
Each flight you board counts once. A round trip with a connection each way is four boardings.
Static example: two passenger boardings.
HISTORICAL GROUP ESTIMATE
About 1 in 40 million
across 2 passenger boardings
Passenger fatality attributable to aviation incidents. Commercial airlines in the study’s first-tier country group, including the US, 2018–2022.
Not a crash rate or a prediction for an individual flight.
What the calculation assumes
We use about 1 in 80 million per boarding, as reported by MIT for each of its two country groups in 2018–2022. The tool applies the first-tier group example from our existing evidence library.
Formula: 1 − (1 − p)n, where p is the historical probability and n is the number of boardings. It assumes independent boardings with the same average rate. It does not use your airline, route, aircraft, weather or medical history.
A flight’s actual circumstances can differ. The source does not provide a confidence interval for this figure; we do not invent one.
Read the evidence and useful passenger actions →One question, a useful stopping point.
This tool explains a historical number. Changing the count does not create new evidence about a particular flight. Once you understand the example, choose your practical next step.
MIT: Study: Flying keeps getting safer · Published 7 August 2024. Our methods.
YOUR NEXT QUESTION
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