Where It's Safest to Fly

Everybody’s heard they are more likely to die in a car accident than on an airplane, but they probably don’t know how skewed those numbers are. If you’re flying in North America or Europe, you’re even more safe than you’ve been told: The top 25 global carriers combined had only six accidents in the past decade, meaning only one in 13.2 million passengers was killed. But while those top 25 airlines carried half the world’s passengers over the past decade, they were responsible for only 13 percent of global air-travel fatalities. That means that outside the world’s biggest, safest airlines, fatality rates are dramatically higher. Safety has improved at least a little on every continent except Africa, where air-travel deaths have risen since the 1970s.