How Safe Is Air Travel, Really? Less Risky Than Diving and Marathons

If you’re worried about flying on an airplane, you’ve probably heard this statistic before: Flying in a plane is safer than driving in a car.

But you may not have heard these: The risk of fatal injury during a commercial flight in the U.S. is significantly lower than the risk associated with scuba diving, running a marathon or even drowning during a bath.

Those findings come from a new study published Thursday by researchers at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. The study analyzed data over the last decade to compare the risk associated with commercial air travel in the U.S. to the risk of everyday activities, like going to work or recreation.

Fatal aviation incidents are rare, but because they are highly publicized and touch on fears of flying, the traveling public can't accurately assess the risk, said Mihhail Berezovski, an associate professor of mathematical sciences at Embry-Riddle and the study’s lead author.

The low number of fatal crashes also makes it a difficult statistical problem, Berezovski said. A year with zero aviation-related deaths does not mean there is zero risk in flying. And one crash with dozens of fatalities can significantly shift the data.

The study wasn’t inspired by recent tragedies, Berezovski said, but the deadly collision between an American Airlines passenger plane and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., last year did lead the researchers to ask if the risk level of flying had changed.

That fatal collision came after a nearly catastrophic midair panel blowout on an Alaska Airlines Boeing plane in January 2024. No one was injured on that flight, but it garnered massive public attention. In 2018 and 2019, two fatal 737 MAX crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia also led to scrutiny over the safety of flying.

Kristy Kiernan, the associate director for the Boeing Center for Aviation and Aerospace Safety at Embry-Riddle, said the university doesn’t want the study to appear “self-congratulatory.” It’s instead an effort to empower the public with more information about the risks of flying.

“One fatality is too many. One fatality is unacceptable to us,” Kiernan said. “The risk is low; we want people to know that. We also want them to know … we’re ever mindful of the risk that does exist and of driving that down.”

The Embry-Riddle Center does receive funding from Boeing, but it operates as an independent organization, university representatives said. Boeing and other aviation industry stakeholders did not participate in the study.

Robert Sumwalt, executive director for the Embry-Riddle Center and former chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, said Thursday that media attention around the aviation industry has added to the perception that aircraft catastrophes are more common than they are.

Media outlets are running stories “anytime something happens,” Sumwalt said, even if, he believes, that something is relatively commonplace in the industry and the crew can safely work around it. Sumwalt himself has been a prominent source for media coverage of recent aviation accidents, including a fatal Air India 787 crash last year that killed 260 people.

“We are often asked by the media and by the traveling public, ‘What’s going on? Is flying still safe?’” Sumwalt said at the news conference. “We wanted to have our own study … to show there’s no major anomalies.”

Both Sumwalt and Kiernan said that safe track record is not an accident; it’s something the industry works toward. “We’ve got to keep the pressure on,” Sumwalt said.

Measuring risk

The Embry-Riddle study aimed to measure risk with several metrics that the average person may intuitively use to define their risk tolerance, mainly how risky is one trip, and how much risk accumulates over an extended time period?

The study measured risk per passenger mile traveled, per trip and per hour of exposure, as well as annual risk of fatal injury and lifetime odds of death. The report included data from 2016 to 2025, with some data sets ending in 2023 and 2024.

It found the risk associated with commercial aviation is much lower than that of many recreational activities. A day of skiing, for example, was 73 times more risky than boarding a commercial aircraft. Running a marathon was 200 times riskier, and climbing Mt. Everest was 1 million times more dangerous.

The risk of a fatal aircraft accident was much lower than other deadly hazards an individual may encounter in their day-to-day life, including being bitten by a dog, stung by a hornet or struck by lightning. Commercial aviation was also less risky than some occupations, like logging, farming or police duty.

“Boarding a U.S. commercial aircraft is among the least dangerous discrete activities an individual can undertake,” the authors wrote in the study.

Commercial aviation is safer than other forms of transportation, the study found. Commercial aviation had a fatality rate of 1.1 deaths per 100 billion miles traveled, while a highway bus had a fatality rate of 9.9 per 100 billion miles. Light-duty vehicles, which include most cars, SUVs and pickup trucks, had a fatality rate of 6.9 per 1 billion miles.

The study wasn’t able to analyze the risk associated with international travel because there was not enough reliable data, Berezovski said.

Decreasing accident rate

This isn’t the first study that has aimed to quantify air travel risk and safety.

A 2024 study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found the risk of fatality from commercial air travel has decreased — from 1 per 350,000 boardings that occurred globally between 1968 and 1977 to 1 per 7.9 million boardings between 2008 and 2017, to 1 per every 13.7 million boardings between 2018 and 2022.

The International Air Transport Association, a trade group representing global airlines, similarly found that the number of aircraft accidents has recently decreased. But the number of fatal accidents and the fatality risk has increased, according to IATA’s annual safety report published in March.

There were a total of 51 accidents last year, among 38.7 million flights, compared to 54 accidents in 2024 among 37.9 million flights. Both years were higher than the five-year average of 44 accidents.

There were eight fatal accidents globally in 2025, compared to seven in 2024 and a five-year average of six fatal accidents. The fatality risk increased to 0.17 per million flights in 2025, compared to 0.06 per million flights in 2024 and the five-year average of 0.12 per million flights.

The most common accidents in 2025 were tail strikes, landing gear problems, ground damage and runway excursions, or when a plane veers off or overruns the runway, IATA said in its report.

“Every accident is, of course, one too many,” Willie Walsh, the IATA’s director general, said in the report. “The goal for aviation remains zero accidents and zero fatalities.”

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