How safe really is flying?

Well, it depends on what type of flying. General aviation flying (which is small personal planes) has a crash rate of around 22% while airline flying has a crash rate of <1%. Those are the accident rates though. If you are talking about the chance of surviving if you do encounter an accident then airlines are not that safe and they have a much higher death rate. This is due to the fact that, when an airline crashes, you don't have the protection you do, in a car per say, and when the people do die, it is a high number of people for just one crash. So.....
As long as your not in an accident, airline flying is pretty safe.

Safer than walking around a town centre near you - apparently

safer than driving.

You are more likely to die of a lightening strike than in an aeroplane. True !

xxx amy xxx

If you would take into account all the flights which have taken place since day one of air travel, the number of accidents, and death as a result of them, is less than 2%, so it is about 98% safe.

Of course it is!!!!! You hear of a car crash even few minutes, how many plane crashes do you hear of? I fly a plane - its fantastic up in the sky - theres hardly anyone else around, they got air traffic control on your case every minute - its fantastic - just relax and enjoy... its fabulous

It's safer than riding in a car as there are far more car accidents everyday than airplane crashes. When a plane crashes it looks worse because groups of people are killed but in actuality more people die in car accidents.

Quite safe. I'm still alive.

Extremely safe. You don't hear about many major plane crashes on the news do you?

But there's always a fatal car or train accident in the news, it's probably very safe to fly.

Very safe; I've been on many flights, and the worst I ever experienced was a little turbulence. You seldom hear of airplane crashes, and yet literally millions of people fly every day.

extremely safe

Unless you got a tool pilot flying the plane.

If you mean in an aeroplane then yes, it is extremely safe. If you mean jumping off a tall building and trying to fly then consider it very unsafe.

You read all these statistics that flying is a hundred times safer than cars/trains and you are a thousand times more likely to die in a car crash (Not actual figures just representative) etc but look at it logically.
How many plane trips do you make a year, if like most people it is the outward and inward flights on holidays that might be what 4, 6 at a push.
I make approximately 200+ car journeys a month (part of my job). The number of journeys void the percentages as the ration of number of trips to deaths is closer for planes than cars etc.
Plus look also at the number of non fatal accidents for flights compared to land based transport. If an accident happens in the air your chance of survival are grim to none. In a car they are actually pretty good as a car can be designed to withstand the impact forces, a plane cannot. Its all about point of view, most analysis of air plane safety is by companies with an invested interest in flights continued success.

By the way I hate planes and flying (did you guess).

oh jeez!!!
really safe...I air travel all of the time hunny!!!!
lol
~Megan Nicole~

Very safe, I would rather go on a plane than drive round some of the roads in the UK that's for sure.

Very, very safe. I once read that there are over 600 747's flying at any given moment throughout the world. Then there are all the other types of aircraft. Plus military. In comparison, how often do we hear about one crashing?