Has air travel always been safer than sea travel? [closed]

Closely related: Do ships sink nowadays?

The first powered, heavier-than-air airplane flight was in 1903. The first death in an airplane crash occurred in 1908. Therefore for the first five years of the airplane, there were zero deaths per passenger mile in air travel. By this metric, air travel was as safe or safer than sea travel.

It’s my belief that air travel today also has fewer deaths per passenger mile than sea travel (but I could be wrong!).

Looking at deaths per passenger mile, has air travel always been safer than sea travel? If not, during what period(s) was sea travel safer?

Best Answer

deaths per passenger mile

If you are looking at "safety", that's actually the wrong metric. People do die on airplanes and boats but the majority of these fatalities have natural causes.

If you look at accidental death's only, the numbers are really too small to make any meaningful statistical comparison. In the 5 years from 2014-2018 there was a total of 1 accident related fatality in all US domestic flights. source

A larger number of accidental deaths often occurs in a single event, which are extremely rare. This makes statistics even more meaningless. It just boils down to something like this:

in a time period where a ship or ferry sank air travel appears to be "safer"
In a time period where an aircraft crashed sea travel appears to be "safer"
These events are so rare, that a statistical comparison is mostly meaningless

Both means of transportation are quite safe.

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Is it safer to travel by ship or plane?

According to research compiled by the Daspit Law Firm, cruise ships have the lowest rate of deaths per billion passenger miles with 0.08. Compare that to 11.9 for rail travel, 3.3 for cars and trucks and 0.8 for commercial air, and traveling on the seas is a relatively safe venture.

What is the safest form of travel?

As surprising as it might seem, riding in an airplane remains the safest mode of transportation. According to recent research, airplane accidents are only responsible for . 006 deaths per billion miles of travel. Most plane crashes involve privately-owned aircraft.

Is it safer to fly over land or sea?

The Quora user also pointed out that curved routes are safer as airlines then fly over land rather than the ocean. Therefore, they spend less time over the ocean, allowing for emergency landings. "Emergency landing is done on a flat land.

How safe is flying by plane? - BBC What's New

Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Images: Oleksandr Pidvalnyi, Jeffrey Czum, Pixabay, Oleksandr Pidvalnyi