(Bloomberg Businessweek) --A door may have blown off a Boeing 737 Max earlier this year, but, “in terms of actual risk, it makes no more sense to be afraid to fly than to be afraid to go into the supermarket because the ceiling might collapse,” says Arnold Barnett, who studies mathematical modeling of health and safety at the MIT Sloan School of Management. “When the risk of something gets incredibly close to zero, maybe we’re better off not worrying about it.”
Air travel has become much, much safer: In a recent paper, Barnett found the risk of dying on a commercial flight has dropped since the 1970s from 1 in 350,000 boardings to 1 in 13.7 million. “The events we fear have become extraordinarily rare,” says Barnett, who says visible airport security measures, along with freak accidents, may remind travelers of the inherent risk. Even the mishaps that make the news don’t usually result in fatalities. “Of course these events are unnerving, but generally, as soon as they happen, the pilots know what to do and bring the plane back safely,” says Barnett, who flew on two 737 Max jets this summer.
The bottom line: It doesn’t matter which airline or model you fly. “We hear about these near misses, and the reason why they’re near misses is that the safety measures we have in place prevent a problem from becoming disastrous.” Save your energy for really scary stuff, like becoming gate lice (No. 1).
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