October 8, 2025 | Car Accident
When plane accidents happen, they’re major news, and these accidents tend to spark growing anxiety about flying.
It’s important to remember that commercial flying is the safest form of long-distance travel and one of the safest forms of transportation overall. Car accidents, on the other hand, are one of the leading causes of accidental death.
How Safe Is Flying?
In 2024, the FAA handled 16.4 million flights, including over 10 million scheduled passenger flights. On any given day, there are about 45,000 flights across the country transporting over 2.9 million passengers. At peak times, there are around 5,400 aircraft in the sky.
In 2022, there were zero commercial flight fatalities, but over 46,000 car accident deaths.
Between 2013 and 2023, aviation accidents across the entire country resulted in 40 deaths, with only three involving commercial flights. During that same time period, motor vehicle accidents caused 447,700 deaths.
Odds of Dying in a Plane Crash Versus a Car Accident
According to a 2017 study and the International Civil Aviation Organization, your odds of dying in a plane crash are one in 11 million. The odds of dying in a car accident are one in 5,000.
When you look at your lifetime odds, the difference is even starker.
Your lifetime odds of dying in a car crash are one in 95. The lifetime odds of dying in a plane crash are too small to calculate, according to the National Safety Council.
Here are the lifetime odds of dying in other types of accidents:
- Accidental fall: one in 91
- Gun assault: one in 238
- Pedestrian accident: one in 471
- Drowning: one in 1,073
- Bicycle crash: one in 3,102
- Accidental gun discharge: one in 9,227
- Severe storm: one in 39,192
- Dog attack: one in 44,499
- Flood: one in 109,535
According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), there were five fatal aviation accidents out of 32.2 million flights in 2022. There were 158 onboard fatalities, most of which occurred in a single accident in China that killed 132 people.
With a fatality risk of 0.11, on average, someone would need to fly every day for 25,214 years to experience a 100% fatal aviation accident.
How Often Do Planes Crash?
There have been several high-profile aviation accidents in 2025. In the first five months of 2025, there have been 60 aviation accidents in the U.S. These incidents caused 188 deaths.
The most serious of these accidents involved an American Airlines passenger flight colliding with an army helicopter in Washington, D.C., killing 67 people. In February, a scheduled domestic flight crashed in Nome, Alaska, resulting in 10 deaths.
All other deadly plane accidents have involved general aviation, not commercial passenger flights.
There have been a few other flights this year with at least six onboard fatalities. This included a medevac flight that crashed in Philadelphia in January and a helicopter sightseeing tour that crashed in Jersey City in April.
For example, in February, a Delta Air Lines regional jet crashed and flipped on the tarmac. All 80 people on board survived. This was classified as an occurrence.
Over 20 years, an average of just 0.00028% of passenger flights overseen by the FAA have been involved in an accident.
Most Plane Accidents Involve General Aviation
There were 1,216 registered civilian aircraft involved in accidents and 327 civilian aviation deaths in 2023. The vast majority of aviation accidents involve general aviation. This includes personal flights, business aviation, sightseeing flights, medevac flights, recreational flying, and air taxis.
In 2023, scheduled service airlines had:
- 28 accidents
- 0.152 accidents per 100,000 flight hours
- 0 fatal accidents
General aviation had:
- 1,150 accidents
- 4.605 accidents per 100,000 flight hours
- 191 fatal accidents
- 0.762 fatal accidents per 100,000 flight hours
Most of these accidents involved private aviation companies, personally owned small planes, and military aircraft.
There are about 0.6 to 0.7 fatal car accidents per million hours driven. In 2021, there were 9.5 fatal general aviation accidents per million flight hours.
Contact the Pennsylvania Personal Injury Lawyers at Fellerman & Ciarimboli, Law PC for Help Today
A combination of technology and training makes flying so much safer than driving. Commercial aircraft are inspected before every flight. Navigation systems are so advanced that even autopilot can land a plane precisely within inches. This means very little manual navigation is required.
When anything goes wrong, including close calls, the incident undergoes an investigation that lasts for months. The National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration determine what happened and change guidelines to prevent future incidents.
If you were injured in an accident in Pennsylvania, contact an experienced personal injury attorney at Fellerman & Ciarimboli, Law PC to schedule a free consultation today.
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