I, too, believe I follow exquisitely reasoned decision analysis, but at the end of the day, I make a decision that is informed by my gut as well as by my head. For example, I believe the statistics generally suggest (but are not absolutely conclusive) that major North American and Western European (and, not being British, I include the UK with Europe
) air carriers are safer than other carriers. Thus, unless the price difference is alarming, I will prefer to ride with the former. But if, say, I am in Asia and the only in-country choice is a local carrier, I will happily take that carrier even if I would decline it for an international flight. And note, too, the statistics suggest that carriers in the second group are far safer for their international flights than they are for their home-country domestic flights.
But so much for airlines. Let's talk about jet transports. Since the 1950s Comet, there have been no transports introduced that have had glaring design flaws that have significantly impinged on safety. And for those of you who say, what about the Turkish DC-10 or Habsheim A320, the answer for the former was not that the cargo door was intrinsically unsafe, it was just that verifying its full closure was not failsafe, and for the latter, it was poor pilot decision-making coupled with unfamiliarity with how quickly the plane would begin to climb in a GA. That is not to say that all of these modern jets have been perfect from the get-go -- just that the entities that design and build these planes have become so good at what they do, that your incremental increase in safety by choosing to avoid a particular new model (in preference for taking a possibly poorly maintained older model) will be vanishingly small relative to all of the risks you face over the course of year.