There is no limit to safety
The safety record of the airline industry is indeed impressive. However, one should not get too carried away with it. The fact that once airborne, miles are quickly flown makes any statistics that counts fatalities versus distance traveled look very good. It seems to me more honest to compare numbers of "transport cases". Meaning that a trip to the supermarket by car counts the same as a non-stop intercontinental flight. These numbers are hard to find, but the ones I saw show that car and plane transport are about equal in safety. This means that it does not harm to work towards even safer air travel and not give up on that subject even when faced with "impossible" cases like this one.