NTSB: Air Accident Survivability Is High

Feb 21 -- The National Transportation Safety Board would like to calm your fears about aircraft accidents.

The first images most people conjure with such a phrase are of disasters like the crash of TWA Flight 800 or last year's Alaska Airlines tragedy — both of which claimed the lives of everyone on board.

But according to preliminary data the NTSB released today, the reality of plane accidents is more like the crash of American Airlines Flight 1420 in Little Rock, Ark., in 1999. Most of those passengers survived.

In fact, the odds of walking away from an aviation mishap are actually pretty good.

The early data from a study expected to be released shortly says that of all passengers involved in commercial aviation accidents in the last 16 years, 95.7 percent survived.

The NTSB says that given the number of planes in these increasingly congested skies, it's a surprise that air travel is as safe as it is.

While the number of air passengers in the United States has doubled since 1983, fatalities from commercial airline accidents have remained quite low. According to Arnold Barnett of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a passenger who randomly flew on a U.S. domestic jet every day could fly for 19,000 years before dying in an accident.

There is cause for concern, however. With the Federal Aviation Administration forecasting a 53 percent increase in passengers in the coming decade, some 1 billion people are expected to take to the skies annually by 2010.

"The importance of examining occupant survivability in aviation accidents is twofold, " the NTSB said in a statement today. "It can help to dispel a public perception that most air carrier accidents are not survivable, and it can identify things that can be done to increase survivability in the accidents that do occur."

High Survivability

The NTSB studied the fatalities and injuries in 568 commercial aviation accidents between 1983 and 2000 as part of its effort to improve the aviation accident rate and reduce fatalities, both by better prevention and by better protection of occupants in the event of an accident.