Study: Flying safety varies by development

HANOVER, Md., Sept. 1 (UPI) -- Airline passengers flying in developing countries face 13 times the risk of being killed in crashes as passengers in the developed world, a researcher says.

And while more economically advanced countries in the developing world have better overall safety records than the others, even their death risk per flight is seven times as high as that in developed countries, an article in the journal Transportation Science says.

Worldwide air-safety data from 2000 to 2007 shows the chance of dying on a scheduled flight in a developed nation like the United States, Japan or Ireland was 1 in 14 million, said Arnold Barnett, a professor of operations research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management and a long-term researcher on aviation safety.

On the airlines of economically advancing countries in the developing world such as Taiwan, India and Brazil, the death risk per flight was 1 in 2 million.

And in less economically advanced developing world countries, the death risk per flight was 1 in 800,000, Barnett said.

But with major advances in safety in the last decade, the distinction is "between safe and very safe, and not between safe and dangerous," Barnett said.

While the study ends in 2007, the patterns it depicts continue to persist, Barnett said.

So far in 2010, there have been eight fatal accidents on scheduled passenger flights. All eight occurred in the developing world.