Is There Cause for Fear of Flying?

As record numbers of travelers crowd into airports, the question of safety is on many minds. Just the thought of hurtling miles above the ground inside a slender aluminum tube is enough to give some people sweaty palms. Even frequent flyers often breathe a sigh of relief when their plane at last touches down.

A series of crashes has raised new concerns about safety in the skies. Nearly 2,000 people died around the world in commercial air accidents in 1985, making it aviation's deadliest year. The worst crash occurred when a Japan Air Lines 747 slammed into a mountain last August, killing 520 people in history's largest single-plane accident. In Dallas 134 died when a Delta L-1011 crashed trying to land in bad weather. Another 329 people lost their lives in the midair breakup of an Air-India 747 off Ireland. In December a DC-8 military charter crashed and burst into flames while taking off from Gander, Newfoundland, instantly killing the 248 U.S. soldiers and eight crew members on board. Then, just last week, Singer Rick Nelson of Ozzie and Harriet fame died with his fiancé and five band members in the crash of a chartered DC-3 in Texas.

Despite the unusual number of mishaps in 1985, air travel remains comparatively safe. The chances of perishing in an air accident last year were 1 in 600,000. That was up sharply from 1 in 3.7 million n 1984, but still compares favorably with other forms of travel. On a mile-for-mile basis, Americans are nearly 100 times as likely to die in car accidents as in plane crashes. Secor Browne, former chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board and now a Washington consultant, calls aviation easily "the safest mode of transportation." He adds, "If you're afraid to fly, then you better not take a bath, and God forbid, don't get in your car."

Even with its overall record of safety excellence, flying by its very nature can arouse fear. Passengers must surrender control of their fate to the plane and its pilot once the aircraft leaves the ground. And while a driver may suffer only minor injury or even walk away from the scene of a car wreck, air crashes are generally fatal.

A sifting of evidence from the 1985 crashes shows that the accidents have few common threads. Eight airlines and six kinds of aircraft were involved in major fatal incidents. The causes ranged from a probable bomb aboard the Air-India jet liner lost off Ireland, to wind shear--a violent shift in air currents--in the case of the downed Delta craft. Such differences have led some experts to call the mishaps a statistical aberration. Concludes John Enders, president of the Flight Safety Foundation, a Virginia research and consulting group: "It's a kind of fluke, a confluence of a lot of things. There isn't any single thing one can point to and say, 'Ah yes, here's a new trend.'"

Nonetheless, experts are taking a close look at every aspect of air travel. The growth of traffic since the advent of airline deregulation has created some concerns about overcrowding in the sky. Because of the spurt of new U.S.-based carriers, about 30,000 flights land or take off in the U.S. each day, an increase of more than 10% from seven years ago. The new airlines provide a bewildering array of commuter, regional, national and international transport, and have filled air ports and airlanes with planes of all sizes.