Top 10 Airline Safety Questions

1. Where is the safest place to sit on an airplane?
   The short answer is there is no safest seat. In an aircraft accident where the plane is seriously damaged or one or more occupants are injured or killed, the severity of the injuries depends on many factors, some of which may not be apparent until an accident occurs. For example, there have been many accidents involving heavy smoke or fire where survival depended on the ability of the passengers to not panic and to quickly remove themselves and others from the aircraft after landing.
2. Which is the safest airline to fly?
   Clearly there are some major airlines such as Southwest of the USA which have not had a passenger die in an accident and others such as United Airlines and Korean Air which have had several fatal events. Those facts don't make one airline automatically safer than the other although it does affect the public's perception of safety. The most important indicator of the overall safety of an airline is how it is regulated by its nation's civil aviation authority. Airlines operating large capacity passenger aircraft in the major industrialized countries have to follow the strictest safety regulations. While the airlines operating smaller capacity aircraft have the choice of operating under the same rules, these smaller aircraft are not certified to the same standards as larger ones. Just as importantly, the airports and air traffic control system have to adhere to similarly high standards. Beyond that, use your good common sense. If an airline is notorious for poor on time performance, lots of passenger complaints, and severe financial problems, then perhaps it is time to find an alternative airline.
   
3. Which aircraft model is the safest?
   In general, all aircraft in a particular class have to adhere to the same set of standards. When safety concerns arise because of one or more accidents associated with a particular model, the civil aviation authorities of the major industrialized countries will usually require that the issue be addressed in all relevant aircraft models. For example, fatal airline accidents due to wind shear in the 1970s and 1980s in the U.S. led to a number of innovations in aircraft and ground wind shear detection systems and also in flight crew training which has led to a reduction in the risk of accidents due to that weather phenomena.
   Passenger fatalities by aircraft model
4. What kind of emergency am I most likely to face?
   For every accident, there are dozens, even hundreds of unusual circumstances that can happen during a flight. For a passenger, the most likely emergencies that you will face where you will have to do something is an evacuation of the aircraft using the emergency slides or using the emergency oxygen system. In most cases, the evacuation is ordered as a precautionary measure, not because the passengers face imminent danger. Emergency oxygen masks may be deployed automatically or be deployed manually by the flight crew. In most cases, deployment of the masks does not indicate that the passengers are in imminent danger.
5. How should I prepare to face these two situations?
   In the case of evacuation by the emergency slides, the best preparation is to be familiar with the location of the exits, be ready to follow the commands of the flight and cabin crew, and to wear slide friendly clothes. Specifically, high heeled shoes may cause the slide to rip, so if you have them on, take them off before leaving your seat. In the case of deployment of emergency oxygen, your first priority is to put on your own mask. If the cabin is depressurized, you face the risk of loss of consciousness. Putting on your mask first decreases the risk of your passing out before having the opportunity to help your children or other passengers with their oxygen masks.
   General travel safety tips
6. If the plane crashes, don't most people die?
   One can argue this question several ways. Based on a review of accidents between 1978 and 1995 with at least one fatality to a passenger, there were a total of 164 fatal accidents involving large jet transports designed in western Europe or the U.S. In 68 cases, all passengers died and in 15 others between 90% and 100% of the passengers died. In 37 cases less than 10% of the passengers died. Among propeller driven aircraft, there were 178 events involving aircraft designed outside of the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe. Of those, all were killed in 108 cases, between 90% and 100% in six cases, and less than 10% in nine cases.
7. Who decides on what changes are made for safety?
   In general, the civil aviation authorities of several key countries, primarily the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, take the lead on making changes in areas such aircraft design, aircraft operation, and pilot training. Other major industrial nations have civil aviation authorities that have regulations and requirements similar to the leading countries. In the rest of the world, the International Civil Aviation Organization plays a similar influential role.
8. Who investigates airline accidents?
   In most cases, formal airline accident investigations are the responsibility of either the nation where the accident occurred or by the nation where the aircraft was registered. Depending on the accident, any number of organizations have a major role in the investigation. Typically in the United States, an accident in U.S. territory involving a U.S. registered aircraft would have the following groups directly involved in the accident investigation and analysis: the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, the airline operating the accident aircraft, the aircraft manufacturer, and the engine manufacturer. If the accident involved sabotage or hijacking, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation would also be involved.
9. Is flying getting safer or less safe today compared with 10 or 20 years ago?
   In the last fifteen years or so, the fatal accident rate for passenger aircraft has not significantly changed. What has changed is the number of flights performed around the world, more than doubling during that same time. If one measures safety by the accident rate, things have not changed much. If one measures safety by the number of accidents, media coverage, and public concern, then flying may seem either more or less safe depending on how much attention is paid by the world media. For example, over a period of about seven weeks in August and September 2005, there were a total of eight events that resulted either in significant numbers of fatalities or were spectacular events that involved no fatalities but that generated intense worldwide media attention. Overall, 2005 had an average number of fatal events, but during those two months there were a heightened awareness of safety on the part of the general public.
10. How often do airliners crash?
    If one considers a crash to be any accident that leads to a passenger fatality to be a crash, then these events happen infrequently. Even if one were to include deliberate events such as passenger fatalities by hijacking or sabotage, such events are still rare. Looking at fatal event data analyzed by AirSafe.com since 1996, There have been at least eight fatal events (2003) and as many as 19 fatal events (1997). In some parts of the world, fatal events are even more rare. For example, from November 2001 to October 2005, no passenger had been killed as a result of an accident, hijacking, or act of sabotage on any U.S. or Canadian jet airliner, or in any jet airliner operating in U.S. or Canadian airspace. While fatal events can happen in any part of the world, the rate of fatal events is higher with airlines from developing countries. For example, while the U.S., Canada, and western Europe account for over two thirds of all airline traffic, from 2000 to 2005 only one quarter of all fatal events occurred in those countries or involved airlines based in those countries. This takes into account hijackings and sabotage events such as the four fatal events on 11 September 2001.