New Statistics Show Need To Improve Air Safety Record
It will take an 80 percent reduction in the death rate for air travel to achieve about the same risk as making a trip by bus.
The statement is likely to raise eyebrows in an area where it is widely believed that air travel is among the safest, if not the safest means of travel. Not so, according to Sy Levine. Although he has spent a career in the aviation industry, Levine was not stimulated to question its safety record until he lost an engineer who worked for him in the fatal 1994 crash of USAir Flight 427 at Pittsburgh (see ASW May 10, p. 4).
His calculations compare the relative risk of travel by airline, bus, car, and even for
the Space Shuttle. Based on raw data published by the U.S. Government, Levine has
calculated the number of fatalities per 100 million miles of travel for each mode. For
cars and busses the most recent complete data cover 1995. By comparing bus, car and air
travel for that year, he calculates the number of fatalities per 100 million miles
traveled as follows. For illustrative purposes, the cumulative record of the Space
Shuttle, from its first flight through mid-1998 is shown (the seven fatalities were all
aboard the Challenger, which exploded in 1986): Mode Deaths Miles traveled Deaths per 100 million miles
Air 168 5.6 billion 2.96 Bus 32 6.4 billion* 0.5 Car 41,800 2,422 billion** 1.7 Space Shuttle 7 0.3 billion*** 2.2 * Includes all school, transit and intercity busses ** Roughly 400 times more miles than airliners and busses *** 12,350+ orbits @ nominal orbit length of 25,800 miles = 318 million total miles In the case of cars and busses, the death rate has been cut roughly in half
from the 1975-1985 period to today. The same cannot be said of the airline industry,
Levine maintains. For example, a rolling 4-year average from 1985 to 1999, assuming
this year ends with no passengers killed (repeating the record in 1998), still
leaves the industry with a rate virtually unchanged from the early 1980’s
(see box). What will an 80 percent reduction achieve? This is the goal the industry has
set for itself to achieve by about 2007. Based on a snapshot of a single year,
1995, where the rate was 2.96 airline passenger deaths per 100 million miles,
a fourfold reduction would yield a rate of 0.59 deaths per 100 million miles
– roughly comparable to the record attained for busses. Levine believes
it is more appropriate to compare busses and airliners, as in both cases passengers
surrender their autonomy to a driver or pilot. His statistics show in stark terms the need for a dramatic improvement in air
safety. Last year’s "zero fatality" record was by no means unprecedented.
In 1993, too, no one was killed aboard a U.S. airliner. The null periods, Levine
cautioned, can foster a pernicious complacency. In fact, he had a label for
it: the "Rip van Winkle mode," where the industry wakes up to the
risk only after a spate of crashes. >> Levine, tel. 310/455-1927
<< ( file: G:/asw/Levine File
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