As a vast amount of accidents happen on landing or take off isnt a longer sector therefore reducing the risk of an accident ?
I use similar logic in my commute. I am told that nearly 80% of fatal automobile accidents occur within 25 miles of the driver's home. Therefore (and I think everyone will find this logic impeccable), I KNOW that once I pass the 25 mile mark I can drive four times as foolishly without increasing my exposure! Now I suppose everyone will want to know where that point is geographically...
The point IS an interesting one though. Seems intuitive that the threats associated with start, taxi, departure, climb, descent, landing, taxi, and shut down (mechanical issues, crowded environment, etc) are considerably greater than those encountered in cruise. So my interest is piqued. How fatigued does a long haul crew have to be before the threat reaches or surpasses that faced by crews doing multiple short legs in a day? (in other words, to what was the long haul crew in the study compared? Are we talking 10 hours compared to nine, where both are single legs, or are we also considering getting beat to hell on a bunch of high workload legs?) Anecdotally, I would offer that, in my military flying career (transport) a day of shuttling troops and equipment between two Hawaiian islands (say, four or five round trips) was substantially more intense than any single trip across the pond.
Now I'm going to have to do some reading!
Dave