Air Travel is shaping up as a safe mode of journeying around, and this has been reiterated by airline safety groups and by the International Air Transport Association. In fact, according to sources, 2017 has been the safest on record for airline passengers.
Even though the year has been the safest for air travel, social media seems to have a different picture altogether. The public perception allegedly is fuelled by posts on social media, which appears to have an underlying sentiment that flying is not safe. The media, including Facebook, other platforms, and mobile phones, reportedly highlight trivial issues and broadcast to the public. These days every individual passenger plays a role in photojournalism. Also, sources cite over two trillion digital photos taken this year and over 300 hours of video uploaded on YouTube each minute. However, the International Air Transport Association reiterates that the world’s commercial aviation system has improved its overall safety performance by nearly 54% over the last decade.
Credit: Chung Webster / CC BY-SA 2.0
In the context of air travel fatalities, it is reported that there were around 12 accidents with 46 deaths from over four billion passengers carried on 36.8 million flights. Even with the fatality rate being low in 2017, there were some incidents in various parts of the world, including Western Australia (WA). The incident included a near-collision of an Air Canada A320 and four other aircrafts. Apart from this, Malaysia Airlines suffered a fatal crash with a 777 carrying around 300 passengers over Ukraine.
Despite the fatalities, flying has been commended as safe due to various factors like reliable engines, advanced features like collision-avoidance warning systems, and more. It has also been observed that the most common causes of air crashes have been eliminated in recent years.
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