Airline Safety is Safer Than Ever

 

        Airline safety remains a top priority for all major airlines today. While there have been news on the defects or Boeing and some major accidents overseas, overall the airline industry is improving year in and year out when it comes to accidents and fatalities. Looking at the bubble chart below The total number of incidents is mostly non-existent for most airlines. 

Now looking at US Airlines, the amount of fatal incidents drops even further.  

Looking that the number of incidents we can see that incidents are falling down to the single digits over the past 10 years. Thus, major incidents are rate and mostly a thing of the past. In fact, there is great opportunity to increase the number of flights while remaining safe and easy to travel. 

 

The airline industry is still very safe to travel compared to driving. In the chart below you see the density of flights in red which shows a high peak because there are usually several hundred passengers at one time. While automobile travel usually involves a few passengers, there are several accident fatalities. So in red we see that airline fatalities are close to the single digits while in blue we see automobile fatalitites number in the 30,000 to 50,000 range annually. 

Aside from being safer to fly, the fares are also decreasing per customer. Since, air travel has become more popular the airfare value has dropped. So people can now travel for leisure more often. 

While fares may increase due to Covid-19 measures, the overall fare rate should reach a lower equilibrium over time. Thus, even though the fares are dropping. The revenue coming in from the airlines has been increasing. Several new factors such as flying points and vacation packages have made revenue increase over time.  

Below is a chart showing that leisure travel is quickly outpacing business travel. So, while business travel is falling, in part due to the ability to do internet video chats such as Zoom, leisure travel is increasing. Thus, leisure travel is going to become the dominant reason for travel in the near future. 

So overall, there are increased gains in airline travel due to leisure travel. And since leisure travel usually includes families of two or more, it will be better than business travel which is usually one person traveling for business purposes. Thus, overall the airline industry operating revenue is increasing annually as can be seen by the chart below. 

So, overall airline travel is very safe and increasingly safer every year. There are definitely less fatalities than driving. This is important as the increase in revenue is due to travel, where whole families (with multiple fares) are becoming the main customers. Thus, the airline should continue investing in marketing campaigns for travel and lower fares which are increasing overall revenue while staying safe.