Lies, damn lies and statistics
I'm not suggesting that Cortilla's stats are incorrect, but you have to look at the parameters and qualifications of how they are presented;
Fatalities per million kilometers traveled....is one way which produces the most impressive figures, however;
How about considering the fatalities per trip; if we took as many trips in a plane in one year as we took trips in a car, we would not be able to quote that it was 7000 times safer. If the trip to the airport was over the same distance as the trip in the plane, then that quote of 7000 times safer would be correct.
The point that Cortilla was making still stands; anyway you look at it, the levels of safety are way beyond even the most optimistic predictions of 50, or even 20 years ago.
Personally, my concerns of low cost operations are not about the way that they do business, but the way they are forcing high cost operations to compete and the things that mid level management are getting away with. The low cost outfits know that they are being scrutinised, plus they have designed their operation to perform as required with fewer overheads. For the larger carriers with higher overheads, the irony is that because of terrorist acts/threats and the subsequent thinning of demand, they lack the turnover to survive the competition and most worryingly, some departments of some airlines lack the budget to adhere to regulations or even maintain the premis that safety comes first.
I sincerely hope that the trend of more traffic with less accidents and fatalities continues as it has almost every year, but I fear the low cost aspect of this industry may see this trend peak and even begin to fall, again, not because they themselves are falling out of the sky, which they clearly are not.