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US Carriers Set Inconceivable Safety Record

US carriers have gone more than two years without a single fatality as a result of a crash, a safety streak unprecedented in aviation history made even more impressive by the fact that they hauled 1.5 billion passengers over the past 24 months.

USA Today reports that in the history of US aviation, even going one year without an accidental death is rare, and the newspaper went to an MIT professor for this soundbite:

"While it doesn't mean risk is now non-existent," [Arnold] Barnett says, "it certainly means they have done a fantastic job at keeping all these threats at bay."

Barnett calculates that it's more likely for a young child to be elected president in his or her lifetime than to die on a single jet flight in the USA or in similar industrial nations in Europe, Canada or Japan.

Of course, Spanair Flight 5022 was a European flight and resulted in 154 fatalities; the cause of that MD-82 crash is still under investigation.

But because aviation accidents are so unbelievably rare, there's no safer way to get where you're going. Yet another reason that we should remember that for all its indignities, flying is amazing.

Related Stories:
· Airlines Go Two Years with No Fatalities [USA Today]
· Funky Flight Safety Videos on Virgin America [Jaunted]

[Photo: Dave Malkoff]