Flying (commercial airlines)

Is flying safe?

Yes. Getting on a scheduled or charter passenger flight is one of the safest things on this list; only train and bus travel score higher. Using the same accident data and flight counts behind our aircraft scores, a random passenger on a random flight between 2016 and 2025 had about a 1 in 6.7 million chance of being killed. That is about 0.15 micromortsMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary per flight, the same as a few hours of ordinary life.

The catch is that the passenger has almost no say. The risk is set by the airline, the aircraft, the airport and the regulator, so the main lever you have is the choice of who you fly with.

How we worked out the number

We did not take this figure from a press release. We computed it from SafetyScorer's own data, using the method on our aircraft methodology page:

• Accidents. From the Aviation Safety Network database, we count every fatal accident on a passenger flight (scheduled, charter or air taxi) on 64 airliner families, including crashes whose cause was never found. In 2016–2025 there were 70, with 2,253 deaths on board.
• Severity. Each accident adds the share of people on board who died, the "full-loss equivalentFull-loss equivalentA way to weigh a fatal accident by the share of people on board who died. A crash that kills everyone counts as 1.More in the glossary" devised by MIT statistician Arnold Barnett. A crash with no survivors adds 1; one death among 200 people adds 0.005. The decade adds up to 47.9.
• Flights. About 323 million passenger flights in the decade, from OpenSky Network flight lists re-weighted to World Bank departure totals, plus a fleet model for the years OpenSky does not cover.

47.9 divided by 323 million is 0.15 per million flights. Adding the shoot-downs and other attacks we leave out of aircraft scores (Ukraine International 752 in 2020, Azerbaijan Airlines in December 2024) raises it only slightly, to about 0.154.

The decade in numbers

The total hides a lumpy record. A few large crashes make up most of the deaths:

Date	Flight	Deaths on board
June 2025	Air India 171, Ahmedabad	241 of 242
October 2018	Lion Air 610, Java Sea	189 of 189
December 2024	Jeju Air 2216, Muan	179 of 181
March 2019	Ethiopian 302, near Addis Ababa	157 of 157
March 2022	China Eastern 5735, Guangxi	132 of 132

Quiet years and bad years alternate: 2023 had four fatal passenger accidents, 2025 had eight. That is why we measure over ten years rather than one.

Has flying got safer?

Much. On the same method, a flight in 1976–1985 carried about a 1 in 1 million chance of death, and in 1996–2005 about 1 in 1.6 million. The change since then is about fourfold. The biggest driver is technology: our data show fly-by-wireFly-by-wireA flight control system in which the pilot's inputs go to computers, which then move the control surfaces. Many such systems also stop unsafe manoeuvres.More in the glossary jets with envelope protection (A320 family, 777, 787, A350, E-Jets) at about 0.04 full-loss equivalentsFull-loss equivalentA way to weigh a fatal accident by the share of people on board who died. A crash that kills everyone counts as 1.More in the glossary per million flights, against 0.17 for the generation before and about 2.6 for classic turboprops.

The world average still mixes very different flights. A major airline flying modern jets between well-equipped airports does better than the average; an older turboprop on a remote bush route does much worse. Our pages for individual aircraft show the gap by type.

Where flights go wrong

Of the 187 fatal passenger accidents since 2006, about 60% happened on take-off, initial climb, approach or landing. Each flight has one of each, which is why risk is better counted per flight than per mile or per hour. A 12-hour flight to Singapore is not twelve times riskier than an hour to Paris.

Many crashes are survivable. 105 of those 187 accidents had survivors. In a survivable crash, fire and smoke are the main threat, and how fast people reach an exit matters more than anything a passenger does in the air.

Away from crashes, the injury that sends people to hospital is turbulence. On Singapore Airlines SQ321 in May 2024, a sudden drop over Myanmar killed one passenger and badly hurt dozens, mostly people not wearing seat belts.

How to fly as safely as possible

1. Choose the operator, not the price. Airlines on the EU Air Safety ListEU Air Safety ListThe European Commission's list of airlines banned or restricted from flying in EU airspace because they do not meet international safety standards.More in the glossary, or from countries the FAA rates Category 2FAA IASAThe US FAA's check of whether a country's aviation regulator meets ICAO standards. Category 1 means it does; Category 2 means it does not.More in the glossary, carry more risk. Our airline pages score individual carriers.
2. Keep the belt fastened whenever you sit. Loose but buckled. It costs nothing and is the single thing that prevents turbulence injuries.
3. Count the rows to two exits. In smoke you cannot see signs. Count seat backs forward and back when you sit down.
4. Leave your bags in an evacuation. People who stop for luggage slow everyone behind them.
5. Keep shoes on and stay sober for take-off and landing. Those are the minutes when you may need to move fast.
6. Worry about the car ride. A long drive to a regional airport to save money can carry more risk than the flight itself. See driving.

How we scored it

Injury risk (96) is the best in this category, and fatality risk (93) is just below train (96) and bus (95) travel. Controllability (45) is the weak point: once the doors close, the risk is out of your hands. Rescue and environment (76) reflects that most accidents happen near airports with fire crews, but some offer no second chance. Compare skydiving, where one jump carries about 30 times the risk of one flight.