Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

40 Million Invisible Planes
In 2016 a total of 40 million commercial passenger flights landed safely at
their destinations. Only ten ended in fatal accidents. Of course, those were the
ones the journalists wrote about: 0.000025 percent of the total. Safe flights are
not newsworthy. Imagine:
“Flight BA0016 from Sydney arrived in Singapore Changi airport without
any problems. And that was today’s news.”
2016 was the second safest year in aviation history. That is not newsworthy
either.
This graph shows plane crash deaths per 10 billion commercial passenger
miles over the last 70 years. Flying has gotten 2,100 times safer.

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Back in the 1930s, flying was really dangerous and passengers were scared
away by the many accidents. Flight authorities across the world had
understood the potential of commercial passenger air traffic, but they also
realized flying had to become safer before most people would dare to try it. In
1944 they all met in Chicago to agree on common rules and signed a contract
with a very important Annex 13: a common form for incident reports, which
they agreed to share, so they could all learn from each other’s mistakes.
Since then, every crash or incident involving a commercial passenger
airplane has been investigated and reported; risk factors have been
systematically identified; and improved safety procedures have been adopted,
worldwide. Wow! I’d say the Chicago Convention is one of humanity’s most
impressive collaborations ever. It’s amazing how well people can work
together when they share the same fears.
The fear instinct is so strong that it can make people collaborate across the
world, to make the greatest progress. It’s so strong it can also remove 40
million noncrashing aircraft from our field of sight each year. Just like it can
erase 330,000 child deaths from diarrhea from our TV screens. Just like that.