With plane crashes making headlines over the weekend, one in Florida with no fatalities and another in Russia that killed dozens, travelers might question whether flying has become less safe.
Aviation experts regard the recent incidents as a statistical blip, however, pointing out that such accidents and fatalities are a fraction of what they were as recently as the 1990s.
In the U.S., no airline passengers were killed in accidents from 2009 until April 2018, when a woman on a Southwest Airlines jet died after an engine broke apart in flight. That raises concern about safety around automated flight controls, said William Waldock, an expert at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
Investigators probe crashes in search of clues to prevent more accidents from the same cause. In the case of the Aeroflot jet that caught fire, killing more than 40 people on board, attention is likely to turn to Russian media reports that lightning disabled the plane's communications system and whether pilots should have burned off fuel before the emergency landing.
Newer planes like the Boeing 787, which uses carbon composite material instead of aluminum, includes fine wiring in the wings to direct current off the plane, said John Hansman, an aeronautics professor at MIT. Only very large airliners have the ability to dump fuel. Most jetliners including the popular Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 do not. That leaves only one option for lightening the fuel load on a plane like the Russian-made Sukhoi SSJ100 — circling long enough to burn fuel.
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