Nervous fliers, this one’s for you! Read these reassuring stats about airplane safety before your next flight.
How Safe Is Flying? 10 Facts That Will Put Your Mind at Ease
Updated on Apr. 23, 2025
1. Commercial air travel is getting safer
This fact is what you really want to know when asking the question “How safe is flying?” So here goes: The lifetime odds of dying in a commercial plane crash are “too small to calculate,” according to the National Safety Council (NSC). Plus, a study out of MIT published in the Journal of Air Transport Management in 2024 found that the risk of a fatality from commercial air travel has been decreasing globally—from 1 per every 350,000 passenger boardings between 1968 and 1977, to 1 per 7.9 million boardings between 2008 and 2017, to 1 per every 13.7 million passenger boardings between 2018 and 2022.
“If you look at the thousands of flights that take place every day globally, the vast majority of them have few, if any, problems,” Bubb says.
2. The odds of surviving a plane crash are high
Even if your plane does go down, your chances of surviving the crash are surprisingly good. In fact, a 2021 report from the National Transportation Safety Board indicated that out of all the airline accidents that took place between 1983 and 2000, 95.7% of the planes’ occupants had survived. The European Transport Safety Council estimates that of aircraft accidents worldwide, all passengers survived in 90% of the occurrences.
3. There’s probably a doctor on board
If your fear of flying stems from the chance you could suffer a cataclysmic medical incident without a medical professional nearby, rest assured this is fairly rare. According to one study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, an emergency is reported on just one flight for every 609. Additionally, physician passengers provided medical assistance in 48.1% of the in-flight medical emergencies examined in the study, and an aircraft diversion occurred in 7.3% of them. Researchers were able to follow up with 10,914 of these patients and found that 25.8% were transported to a hospital, 8.6% were admitted and only 0.3% died.
4. Safety procedures do work
That three-minute safety tutorial at the beginning of each flight about how to brace for a crash and use an oxygen mask? Abiding by those tactics can save your life. In one test conducted by Discovery TV, researchers put crash-test dummies on a Boeing 727 and crashed it into the Sonoran Desert. (The pilots bailed first.) An analysis of the dummies showed that bracing for impact—placing your head between your legs and putting your hands over your head—increases a passenger’s chance of survival.
5. Turbulence will not destroy your plane
Turbulence can be nerve-racking for passengers, but it’s largely just an inconvenience for pilots. Patrick Smith, the pilot behind AskThePilot.com, puts it best: “There’s no more poignant reminder of flying’s innate precariousness than a good walloping at 37,000 feet. It’s easy to picture the airplane as a helpless dinghy in a stormy sea.” But that’s not the reality—the pilot has been trained to manage these bumpy situations. More reassuring? Even when it seems like the plane has dropped hundreds of feet at a clip, it’s likely only moving a few feet.
That said, when turbulence hits, buckle up. “Injuries in turbulence only happen to passengers who were not using their seat belts,” says Bunn.
6. The plane has backup systems
Most commercial aircraft have two engines. “Since the plane flies fine on one engine, each engine serves as the backup for the other engine,” Bunn explains. “But if either of the engines has to be shut down, the pilots must land at the nearest airport because once an engine is shut down, there is no immediate backup unless the engine is restarted.”
In addition to having two engines, jets also have multiple redundant systems in case one fails, according to Bubb. “For example, in case there is hydraulic failure of the landing gear, there is a manual system to extend the landing gear,” he explains.
7. There are fewer plane crashes now
Not only has the risk of a fatality from commercial air travel decreased over the years, but the number of accidents and crashes have also declined. So how safe are planes now? According to a report from Boeing, the accident rate of commercial jets has declined by 45% between 1974 and 2023, while the fatal accident rate has declined by 68% for the same period. Better yet, over the past two decades, the total number of accidents dropped by about 30%.
Here’s what makes airplane travel so much safer today than in the past, according to Bubb: “There aren’t as many crashes today as in the past because technology has substantially improved. Airplanes and the air-traffic-control system are much more advanced and sophisticated.”
8. Commercial pilots go through extensive training
Being the pilot of a commercial aircraft takes considerable skill, training, professionalism and flight hours. According to Bunn, it takes about a year and 250 flight hours to obtain a commercial pilot’s license. “After getting that license, the pilot must fly for several more years before being a candidate for an airline job,” he says. The FAA requires newly hired commercial pilots to have a minimum of 1,500 hours—which is also what’s required for an airline transport pilot’s license, the highest level of pilot certification.
9. There are safety checks between flights
It may seem like commercial aircraft land at airports, deplane the passengers and then immediately board the next group, but as this is happening, important safety checks are taking place. Externally, pilots do a “walk around” inspection to make sure that all of the airplane’s parts are not damaged or broken, Bubb says. Internally, prior to takeoff, pilots also do flight-control checks to make sure the flight-control system is properly functioning, as well as check gauges to make sure there aren’t any malfunctioning parts.
And the safety checks don’t end there: They happen continuously during a flight. “If there is any irregularity, it is communicated to the pilots on a computer screen in the cockpit,” Bunn explains. “In addition, data is constantly fed from the engines to a computer on the ground that tracks engine performance. Any change in performance calls for an internal inspection of the engine with a borescope.” (A borescope is a special optical tool that can view areas that otherwise wouldn’t be visible.)
10. Planes are built to handle lightning strikes
Commercial aircraft are designed to “have conducting paths through the plane to take the lightning strike and conduct the currents,” according to the National Weather Service (NWS). While it’s relatively common for lightning to hit a commercial plane, it rarely has a significant impact on the plane’s continued safe operation, Boeing engineers explained in Aero magazine. And when a lightning strike is suspected, a mandatory inspection for damage takes place.
The best way to avoid lightning strikes is to delay or cancel a flight, but that’s not always an option, especially when a plane is already in the air. “If pilots encounter bad weather in flight, they might divert to a different airport or fly hold patterns to wait for the bad weather to pass,” Bubb says. “Before the plane leaves the gate, pilots must become fully familiar with the weather at the point of departure, en route and at the destination.”
FAQs
How safe is flying overall?
In the grand scheme of things, very safe. In the 1960s, flying was 30 times safer than driving, according to Bunn. “Back then, though there was a crash of a major U.S. airline every year, we thought that—considering how much safer flying was—was pretty good,” he says. Then in the 1970s, there was a whole year when no major carrier had a crash. “We pilots thought that was amazing.” Fast-forward to the present day: Before the January 2025 incident, the last crash of a major U.S. airline was in November 2001, says Bunn. That was 23 years without a crash.
How safe is flying compared with driving?
Flying is quite a bit safer. The NSC looked at data on deaths by mode of transportation, comparing passenger vehicles, buses, trains and commercial airplanes, and came to the conclusion that passenger vehicles are “by far the most dangerous motorized transportation option.”
Over the past decade, the passenger vehicle death rate per 100,000,000 passenger miles was more than 1,000 times higher than for commercial airlines. “You are much more likely to get into a car accident than an airplane incident or accident,” Bubb says.
What’s the safest airline?
It’s hard to single out a particular airline for being the safest. “Universally, airline pilots are held to very high safety standards,” Bubb says. “While there have been plane crashes for a variety of reasons, because airline pilots globally are held to these same standards, it is difficult to identify one airline that is the safest.”
Is it safer to fly out of certain countries than others?
Yes. There are definitely countries that are safer to fly out of than others, Bubb says—specifically those that are not experiencing geopolitical strife. “For example, the Russia-Ukraine War has forced many airline jets to fly around Russia instead of over it,” Bubb explains. “Geographically, Russia is a massive country. Flights that normally took a few hours took many more. Plus, pilots had to load more fuel because of the extended distance.”
Additionally, Bunn says that some countries have more up-to-date aviation infrastructure and better government oversight of the country’s airlines.
How are recent aviation challenges being addressed?
According to Bubb, the recent FAA layoffs will impact the air-travel system but won’t “compromise its overall safety.” There have also been concerns about an ongoing shortage of air-traffic controllers. However, Bubb says that things are turning around: “More than 7,500 controllers-in-training are in the testing phase, which, if they pass, will more than fill the shortage.”
Additional reporting by Juliana LaBianca.
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Sources:
- Dan Bubb, PhD, former airline pilot and current professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; email interviews, Nov. 6, 2024, and April 2025
- Tom Bunn, pilot and author of SOAR: The Breakthrough Treatment for Fear of Flying; email interview, Nov. 5, 2024
- Reuters: “FAA fires fewer than 400 workers, transportation chief says”
- CNN: “How deadly has air travel been in 2025? Here is what to know”
- Associated Press: “Key events in the troubled history of the Boeing 737 Max”
- National Safety Council: “Airplane crashes”
- Journal of Air Transport Management: “Airline safety: Still getting better?”
- National Transportation Safety Board: “Survivability of Accidents Involving Part 121 U.S. Air Carrier Operations, 1983 Through 2000”
- Safety Science: “Survivability of occupants in commercial passenger aircraft accidents”
- New England Journal of Medicine: “Outcomes of Medical Emergencies on Commercial Airline Flights”
- Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association: “Boeing 727 Crashed on Purpose for Science, Television”
- AskthePilot.com: “Turbulence: Everything You Need to Know”
- Federal Aviation Administration: “How do I get a commercial pilot license (certificate)?”
- Boeing: “Statistical Summary of Commercial Jet Airplane Accidents”
- National Weather Service: “Lightning and Planes”
- Boeing: “Lightning Strikes: Protection, Inspection, and Repair”
- National Safety Council: “Deaths by Transportation Mode”
