CONTROL TOWER — TRUST

Sources & methodology.

Every number on this site links to the public source it came from. When we could not source a number, we deleted it — including some good jokes. Where a comparison is not apples-to-apples, we say so rather than quietly fix the math.

Primary sources

MIT (Arnold Barnett), 2024 — 1 passenger death per 13.7M boardings, worldwide 2018–2022. Every safety percentage on this site derives from this one number.

Aviation Safety Network — per-aircraft and per-airline fatal-accident records.

NSC Injury Facts / CDC — lifetime odds of death for the everyday comparisons.

ICAO — the definition of "fatal accident" we apply below.

How we define things

"Fatal accident" — ICAO definition: any accident with at least one passenger or crew fatality, scheduled commercial jet operations.

"Years without fatal accident" — jet-era, mainline operations only; regional subsidiaries counted separately.

Odds comparisons — we divide a lifetime odds-of-death figure (NSC/CDC) by the per-boarding risk of 1-in-13.7M. Those are different denominators, and we are not going to pretend otherwise: it answers "over a whole life, how does this compare to one flight?", not "which kills more people per hour?" Every row, and the division, is shown in full →

Who checks this

Nobody but us, so far — and we would rather say that than pretend otherwise. There is no expert review board behind this site yet. What there is: every number traces to a named public source above, and every claim we could not source, we cut.

Found something wrong, or fly for a living and want to review this? [email protected]

On bad days

If a serious accident happens, this site switches to a factual, humor-free mode: what's known, what's not, and how rare the event remains. We never pretend aviation is perfect — we show you the honest denominator.