7 Safer Airlines: how is important?

 It is easy enough to appoint seven safest airlines in the nation. It is difficult, however, to say what good these lists are if your goal, as a traveller, is to avoid death.

Consider the case of passengers on the flight from Southwest this month who heard a loud bang and wanted to see the light of the day, entered by the ceiling of their Boeing 737.

If, before belting-in, they had consulted the last classification of security, they would have seen that Southwest record is exemplary. On the basis of incidents by flight, Southwest is the safest of large operators American and more secure second overall, arriving just behind much smaller, head of AirTran Airways. (Southwest is acquiring AirTran).

Knowing the security classification Southwest availed themselves passengers on the flight from Pocket absolutely zip. This means no it is not the steps you can take to help ensure your safety in the air - and we'll get to those - only who is studying the ranking is not one of them.

"These lists", said Bill Voss, Chief of the Flight Safety Foundation in Arlington, Virginia, "" are effectively meaningless."" Why? Death is fanciful. The mower can reach you at random. More important, says Voss, "the balance sheet of the United States security is so good that it is very difficult to find enough accidents or incidents to draw much of a conclusion on which most secure.". It is enough data points to draw distinctions between the very safe and very secure. ?

The most popular ranking compares the number of flights a carrier against security number "incidents". As determined by the FAA and the NTSB, "incidents" are events which do not meet aircraft damage or thresholds of more serious injuries "accidents". For example, a collision between a plan and a bird flight would probably be an incident. A collision in the air between a plan and another plan would be an accident.

For major US carriers, there are many flights, a few incidents and accidents even less. Thus, although it is possible to tell mathematically that Southwest outranks US Airways, the difference between the 0.0000203 of the Southwest and US Airways 0.0000212 is…small. Too small to be of real significance, it is a duplication of hair so small to require the clamp nano tweezers.

AirTran flight Incidents: 0.0000196

To the Southwest, the Incidents by flight: 0.0000203

US Airways, flight Incidents: 0.0000212

Continental flight Incidents: 0.0000260

Delta, Incidents by flight: 0.0000386

United Airlines, flight Incidents: 0.0000407

American Airlines, flight Incidents: 0.0000701

-Source: FAA and the NTSB

One would think that Christopher White, a spokesman for AirTran, would like to make a little touting the supremacy of the sound carrier to safety, but it, too, stressed the fact that major carriers are interchangeable, when it comes to security. "" Everyone is 'safer,' said White. "."Aviation today in America is the best in the world. AirTran, we have a few things for us: we have an extremely young fleet, the youngest all-Boeing fleet in the most recent to the United States give you had less worry, less mechanical problems. "AirTran also scored highly for overall customer satisfaction.