After the mysterious disappearance of MH370, a Malaysia Airlines jet carrying some 239 passengers four months ago, nervous flyers have many reasons to be fearful right now.
Over the last 10 days alone, some 462 people have been presumably killed in three different air crashes on three different continents involving Malaysia Airlines, TransAsia and Air Algérie. Causes behind these air crashes are different, but the notion that air travel is by many measures the safest, is clearly under dispute now.
Major swaths of airspace now seem vulnerable to missiles fired as part of one violent conflict or another. This has forced many airlines to avoid using the airspace over conflict zones in many parts of the world. Eventually, this may mean longer flying time and higher airfares on account of rising fuel and insurance surcharges.
According to website planecrashinfo.com, there were routinely between 25 and 35 major planes disasters a year, globally, throughout the 1960s and ‘70s, among large planes with more than 18 passengers aboard.
This year, the death toll has spiked alarmingly, almost entirely due to the two high-profile Malaysian Airlines disasters in which nearly 500 people are presumed to have died.
But outside of those, among the hundreds of thousands of other flights to have taken off, there haven’t been any commercial flight disasters with more than 20 fatalities this year, industry experts argue.
Yet, the public perception is at a feverish pitch right now, and that’s hard for a highly volatile industry to change.
But, according to Tony Tyler, the chief executive officer and director general of IATA, “despite the events of the past few days, flying is safe”.
He points out that, every day, approximately 100,000 flights take to the sky and land without incident. In 2013, more than 3bn people flew and there were 210 fatalities.
“Regrettably, we have surpassed that number already this year. But even so, getting on an aircraft is still among the safest activities that one can do.”
As Tyler emphasised, “The greatest respect that we can pay to the memory of those involved is to leave nothing unturned in our quest to understand the cause and to take steps to ensure that it is not repeated.”
Truly, the last few days have been very sad times for everyone involved with aviation. For, every accident is one too many!
With three tragedies in such quick succession, many people will, understandably, be asking questions about aviation safety.
Obviously, it is a challenging time for the air transport industry. Disasters in quick succession have clearly rattled the global airline industry, which is only recovering after several years of uncertainty. Despite huge investments in technology and personnel, accidents keep occurring.
Governments around the world and the industry must now sit together and devise ways to ensure that safety remains the top priority. Safeguarding passengers from harm remains central to the mission of the aviation industry. It has been that way throughout the industry’s development over the last century. And all stakeholders must do everything in their power to make flying ever safer.
