So just how dangerous IS flying on a passenger jet?

With several plane crashes in the news the last few weeks, it’s not uncommon to have travelers feeling a bit nervous as they board a passenger jet during the upcoming weeks. But how at risk are you of being in an incident or worst case scenario, a crash?

In the US, there is an average of over 27,000 flights per day with 10 million flights per year. At it’s daily peak, there are about 5,400 passenger jets in the sky at one time.

Worldwide, there are 36 million flights per year with less than 50 incidents reported. This gives any flight a 0.000138% chance of having an incident happen. It’s important to note an “incident” doesn’t mean a crash. This could be a blown engine, or landing gear malfunction, or as was the case when a door fell off an Alaska Airlines jet in January of 2024.

Compare this to automobile travel where you have a 1% chance of getting in a fatal car crash in your lifetime.

So if you were to fly 10 times in your life, at 0.000138% of a chance of an incident happening per flight… this brings your chance of being in an incident on a jet to 0.00138% chance.

So with these broad numbers, and taking no other factors into account, you are just under 1000 times more likely to get in a fatal crash than a serious passenger jet incident.