Commercial Flights

True in every unit, but the size of the gap swings from 200 to 1 (per kilometre) to 10 to 1 (per hour). And none of those units say anything about your annual risk, which depends on how many flights you board, not how far they go.

Calculate Your Risk

Commercial flight segments you board per year (a return trip with one connection each way is four)4 flights per year

The misleading stat

Flying is the safest way to travel

(global average, including people never exposed)

Your actual annual risk

1 in 2,500,001

(0.0000% chance per year)

For comparison

Car crash (US annual): 1 in 8,000
Lightning strike (US annual): 1 in 16,000,000
Bee sting death (US annual): 1 in 4,600,000

Methodology & sources

This calculator multiplies chained probabilities:

Flights per year
Fatal accident: 2e-7 — IATA 2020-2024 five-year average: roughly one fatal accident per 5 million flights. 2024 alone: 7 fatal accidents in 40.6 million flights
You are among the dead: 0.5 — IATA five-year fatality risk of 0.10 per million sectors divided by the fatal accident rate of ~0.2 per million

Read the full analysis →