A Little Perspective
As we watch all of these post flying back and forth on how we should now screen every commercial pilot in the world to a level beyond how we screen the captain of a nuclear submarine, can we at least look a some perspective? The Air Transport Action Group (ATAG) released a report last year showing that there would be more than 37.4 million commercial flights in 2014, which equates to over 100,000 per day. Given those numbers, even if we had one incident per year such as this tragic event, the failure rate would be around 2.7027e -8.
I realize the horrible consequences for the families and friends of those lost on this flight. But I still am going to fly two or more times per month for work, and will not feel any less safe than I did before. Airline transport is BY FAR the safest method of travel. Stay calm and fly.