You know what they say about statistics....
If you are trying to show something with numbers you often have different metrics, that look either better or worse than each other, that you can choose to support your point.
The undeniable point, however, is that flying is incredibly safe - and even more so if you select your carrier carefully.
Much of the improvement in the 70s and 80s came from better engineering and training protocols. The engineering improvement meant that modern aircraft simply do not fail catastrophically any more unless pushed outside their normal operating envelope (and commonly waaay outside their normal envelope).
Training protocols improved because the aircraft losses in the early days of jets highlighted deficiencies in some of the skills required (in comparison to the previous generation of aircraft). As a result of these improvements, aircraft that sometimes required superior handling skills were flown by crews that had those superior skills! - and everything became pretty much hunky-dory.
Then came the boom in air travel. The major manufacturers saw huge markets opening up, sometimes in places where those superior skills might be more difficult to acquire. The response, more automation and systems to protect the aircraft from the more idiotic requests from their pilots. I'm not sure how official the line was, but I recall a salesman from one of the big manufacturers saying that they were now building aircraft that almost anyone with only basic piloting skills could be training to fly. Some of this is a good thing because we can use technology to make things safer for us, but it was also self-serving because although lots of crashes mean more sales, it also reduces confidence in the industry which wipes out many of those sales too - in simple terms, no-one wants crashes and for most situations the technology enables many modern aircraft to largely fly themselves in response to control instructions entered into their computers.
Now, time passes.....and the world changes. The people who design the aeroplanes show that it is easy to train someone to fly the modern computers. The people who developed their superior skills over a long period and much, good training and who honed those skills through practice are joined on the flightdeck by new people whose skills were based more around the automatics available - these skill sets complemented each other in many ways. The lucky new ones were open-minded and learned everything they could from their elders and wisers - just like old gits like me did when we were new to it all.
Then, more time passes. And the older generation starts to retire. And aircraft are placed in the hands of those who are more system operators than seat-of-the-pants pilots. And training protocols are now designed by people who grew up knowing only this type of flying. And while everything is happening normally everything is fine. But when something abnormal happens, the skills and knowledge that helped people to handle them to a good outcome are sometimes missing. The result is what we have seen recently - aircraft that were quite flyable falling to the ground because the automatic protection systems were not working fully, or the pilots did not fully understand how the computer (and their inputs) fly the aircraft, or the information provided by all the clever systems could not be assimilated or understood by the crews. And all the old gits who are now nearing or enjoying their retirements stand around saying that they just can't understand why the crew allowed things to happen that way.
The industry has now woken up to this and some are starting to talk about changing things. But while us passengers will do anything to save a Euro or two on a flight and the 'lo-co's are king in many region, it's a brave operator that will start investing in better training before it is told to. And when the change comes - and it will to one extent or another, because no-one can afford a public loss of confidence in the industry - we need to make sure that the right skills are trained, not just going back to the old ones. The whole business has changed in the last 25 years and different competencies are needed today than in years gone by.
And all of this because, by some metrics, the numbers are starting to go in the wrong direction.
By way of disclosure, I should make clear that I am not a professional pilot (my career started in ATC) but I do a bit of work now and then on the safety side of things. Maybe this accounts for the healthy dose of cynicism that seems to have pervaded the above!
I also want to make clear that none of the above is intended as a sleight against pilots as individuals or the people who have made decisions up to this point, but when you aggregate the numbers, they start to tell you something. And we ignore those early signs of problems at our peril.
Your uncle was on the right track!
PS - It's fascinating to see that the things that today we call Just Culture and abuse of psychoactive substances and command/authority gradient we all being discussed at safety seminars in 1979. And it's even more fascinating to see people who will barely have been out of short pants talking about such things as if they had just thought of it! Ooops, there's that cynicism agan.