How safe is it to fly?
There have been three aviation disasters in the last week: the shooting down last Thursday of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine, killing all 283 passengers and 15 crew, the crashing of TransAsia Airways flight GE222 while trying to land at a Taiwanese airport on Wednesday, killing 48 and injuring 10, and the crashing today of Air Algérie flight AH5017 from Burkino Faso to Algiers, which was carrying 110 passengers and six crew members.
So how safe is it to fly? The short answer is: in spite of these accidents, it is very safe to fly and becoming more safe over time. You can see relevant statistics here.
I keep a flight log – that’s what comes of having a father and a father-in-law who flew with the RAF – so I know that I’ve made 542 flights totalling just over 1,000 hours in the air. I’m going to keep on flying because there are still many countries that I wish to visit.