Re: Utter nonsense.

They're not "dropping like flies" at all. There's been what? Half a dozen accidents in a three month period? How many absolutely uneventful flights took place in that time? And in the year before that?

Try 5 accidents in August alone, not a 3 month period.

When you add up the crashes versus the millions of safe miles flown, the risk is minimal. I'd fly everywhere if I could.

The big problem though, is the media never tells anyone about all those flights that were fine... they only go nuts over the crashes so they stand out and we focus on those. Sometimes I wish they would point out during a crash story just how many planes DID make it from said airline, so that we could get some measure of comfort from that. But they don't care about us, just making and reporting news.

Brenda

For a total of what? 500 dead? If that?

What is it going to take to get you to embark upon a proctocraniotomy?

Firstly, let's look at some actual air accident numbers from the charmingly but accurately titled [link|http://www.planecrashinfo.com|http://www.planecrashinfo.com]:

[link|http://www.planecrashinfo.com/more%20accidents%20lately.htm|http://www.planecras...ents%20lately.htm]

Clearly, we won't have the numbers for August 2005, but let's look at 2004.

[link|http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd-30/NCSA/RNotes/2005/809897.pdf|http://www-nrd.nhtsa...s/2005/809897.pdf]

42,636 fatalities in 2004. That's 3,553 deaths every month. There's an estimate that for every fatality on the roads in the USA, there will be 13 seriously injured. That makes a staggering 46,189 seriously injured every month.

The good news is that this was a reduction from 2003!

The bad news is that 11 states have worse fatality rates than Portugal, where red means "stop if you want to", and the motto is "we lift off for pedestrians".

[link|http://www.driveandstayalive.com/info%20section/statistics/stats-usa_indiv-states_per-capita_2002.htm|http://www.driveands...r-capita_2002.htm]

The good news for you, Brenda, is that Missouri is the least worst of the worst states that are worse than the worse country!

And here's some accident rate information from planecrashinfo.com:

[link|http://www.planecrashinfo.com/rates.htm|http://www.planecrashinfo.com/rates.htm]

Look at Delta Airlines, the #1 rated US airline: 4 fatal events for...

EIGHTEEN POINT FIVE MILLION FLIGHTS

Here's the giant, enormous clue, Brenda:

Air travel is safer than driving by an enormous margin.

Now, can we PLEASE put a lid on this bullshit?

Welcome to IWETHEY!