A new MIT study shows flying gets safer by the decade

Airfare, departure times, flight length — these are the usual considerations for travelers who want to book a flight.

But now, more are looking at a new factor: the aircraft itself.   

One in five travelers said they are doing more research into the plane they may be flying on before they book, while slightly more (22%) said they are limiting air travel for the rest of the year, according to a survey conducted in June by the digital analytics company Quantum Metric.

Overall, 55% of travelers said they have changed the way they book flights because of recent news about aircraft and airlines, the survey showed.  

The survey did not directly mention Boeing, but a steady stream of media coverage about the company — from its quality control to business ethos — have dominated headlines since a door panel blew off a Alaska Airlines flight on Jan. 5, 2024.

These stories have directed consumers’ focus to Boeing’s aircraft, which was something travelers didn’t use to pay attention to, said Danielle Harvey, global vice president and head of travel and hospitality strategy at Quantum Metric.

“Our research infers that fliers are doing more research to understand and potentially avoid Boeing aircrafts,” she said.

The survey also showed 13% of respondants are avoiding discount carriers to feel more secure about flying.

But this doesn’t really make sense, said Brendan Sobie, indepedant aviation analyst and founder of Sobie Aviation.

“First of all, there are more discount carriers operating Airbus (A320s) than Boeing (737s) particularly in Asia,” he said. “And the Boeing issues, of course, impact all airlines regardless of their business model.”

As unnerving as recent headlines about Boeing may be, aviation safety is improving by the decade, according to Arnold Barnett, a professor of statistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-author of a research paper about the risks of commercial flights.

The paper, published in the Journal of Air Transport Management in August, states that the risk of dying on a commercial flight globally was 1 per 13.7 million passenger boardings from 2018 to 2022 — a significant improvement from the decade before, and far cry from the one death for every 350,000 boardings that occurred between 1968-1977.

Commercial safety standards can be evaluated by a variety of metrics — from miles flow to flight hours — but according to MIT News, Barnett chose “deaths per passenger boarding” because it answers a simple question: If you have a boarding pass for a flight, what are your odds of dying?

Barnett suggests several factors have made flying safer, according to MIT News, including “technological advances, such as collision avoidance systems in planes; extensive training; and rigorous work by organizations such as the U.S. Federal Aviation Agency and the National Transportation Safety Board.”

But geographical disparities exist, according the report, which divides the world into three tiers when it comes…