Recent plane crashes put spotlight on airplane safety

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – Crashes like the one in Tupelo Saturday morning and another near Washington D.C. Sunday are putting a spotlight on aircraft safety.

Statistically speaking, Air travel remains one of the safest modes of transportation, but there are risks. According to one news outlet, the odds of a plane going down are 1 in 5.4 million.

Statistics show you’re more likely to die on the drive to the airport than in a plane crash.

Former military and commercial pilot Michael Hainsey said there are precautions in place to minimize as much risk as possible if a pilot encounters an in-flight emergency.

“They go through training on how to fly the airplane of course, but a major part of the training is what we call emergency procedures. What do you do when something goes wrong? From just a little something where maybe your fuel’s not quite leveled or a major something like the engine goes out. All pilots are trained that way. They continue to practice and they have requirements every two years to show proficiency in the procedures required to during an emergency procedure,” said Hainsey.

Crashes are rare compared to the tens of thousands of flights that take off daily, but they do happen. Hainsey said a passenger has to trust the system.

“If you’re a passenger on a plane with an emergency and that does happen every now and then, is you have to trust your pilot’s training. It’s a whole system of the airplane, the pilot, it’s the air traffic controllers, they’re all striving to get the airplane down safe. And you just have to trust in that,” said Hainsey.

An aircraft can have an emergency in mid-air for numerous reasons.

“The majority of the time it has to do with maybe the engine isn’t quite running right and as soon as something like that happens then the pilot knows what he or she has to do to get the airplane on the ground safely,” said Hainsey.

Almost 45,000 flights take off and land safely every day in the United States.

“When a plane crash happens, it makes the news because it’s a big thing, although it’s so rare. There are literally tens of thousands of flights, commercial flights, every day taking off and landing safely. Once or twice a year, something happens that’s fatal. So statistically once again, it’s a safe way to travel, but still, people are concerned,” said Hainsey.

The odds of an American dying in a plane crash is about 1 in 11 million.

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