the passenger
I am a passenger too and I have a license to fly a small aeroplane (not a 747.)
I have this irrational sense that flying is very safe and that British Airways are particularly safe.
So there you go
And Prof Ladkin's paper was very clever and amusing, but I still feel irrationally safe flying with British Airways, as they have not killed me yet in several hundred flights.
By the way, CG Jung defined "irrational" as the process of making sense of the world by non concrete experiences and the unconcious mind is good at doing that kind of stuff.
So maybe your whole line of argument is paradoxical and therefore unresolvable on this forum?
The more the professional pilots provide evidence, the more your brain will give you reasons why it cannot be so.
Happy flying.