AirAsia flight 8501: tragic year in skies, but flying is still safe

This, of course, is of no comfort in the immediate aftermath of the loss of Indonesia AirAsia flight 8501 on Sunday.

Most people are understandably horrified by crashes that claim hundreds of lives. Travellers rightly expect that given decades of research and the investment of billions of dollars into better technology and a culture of safety, the airliner they board will arrive at their destination, and maybe even on time.

Given that air flight is just 111 years old and commercial aviation did not begin in earnest until the 1920s this is a remarkable achievement. It has shrunk the globe and contributed to the growth of a connected international community our 19th-century forebears would never have dreamed of.

While there is some debate over just how safe commercial aviation is – airlines cite fatalities over distance as opposed to the insurance industry's fatalities over the number of individual journeys – there is no disputing that aviation has become safer on both measures with every passing decade.

On a deaths per billion kilometres travelled basis, the fatality rate for motor vehicles is 62 times greater than for civilian airliners. On a deaths per individuals transported basis, planes rank second only to motorbikes and bicycles in terms of risk.

Including the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that claimed almost 3000 lives, 19,909 people have died as a result of commercial air crashes since the start of 1999. This is an average of 1327 a year, a figure that is significantly higher than the 922 who are believed to have been killed in air crashes since the beginning of 2014.

Only three of the seven fatal air crashes of 2014 involved significant international airlines. They were the loss of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 under mysterious circumstances on March 8; the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight 17 over Ukraine on July 17, and this latest tragedy, the as-yet-unexplained loss of Indonesia AirAsia flight 8501 over the Java Sea.

While the other four crashes, the loss of a Nepal Airlines flight near Pokhara in Nepal, a TransAsia Airways flight en route to Taiwan, an Air Algerie flight in Mali and a Sepahan Airlines flight near Mehrabad in Iran, claimed 223 lives – almost as many as the 265 total for 2013 – they failed to elicit the same response.

The reasons for this are at least two, and possibly three or fourfold. One is that three out of the four tragedies occurred in relatively isolated locations where there was not a strong Western media presence. Without the words and the images to support the narrative, the events themselves faded quickly into the background.

A second reason is there may be a chauvinistic presumption that because the crashes involved lesser known carriers servicing routes unlikely to carry Westerners in significant numbers and, in at least one case, involved a plane of dubious provenance, it was a case of "business as usual" in that part of the world.

The third, and this is quite significant in comparison to the three big crashes that have dominated the news, is that in three out of the four smaller crashes there were survivors. The planes were easily recoverable, witnesses were able to describe what happened and the causes of the crashes were soon known.

All three of the major crashes however have involved an element of mystery and intrigue, with planes just disappearing off the radar in two instances and hostile action eventually proving to be the culprit in the third.

Then there is the question of scale. More people died aboard Malaysia Airlines flight 17 in July than in 12 separate crashes in 2013.

While it is a given that global communications mean when tragedy strikes the news is flashed around the world within hours, this should not blind us to the fact the aviation industry has a justly deserved reputation for doing its job safely and well.