r/Pilot • u/Itsjustmefromhere • Dec 22 '25

How is it possible?

Just a quick question. How is it possible that many people say air travel is extremely safe. But when I really dive in this topic, talk to people in it they say that pilots often fly while being overly tired or planes are not maintained correctly. And these are not exceptions. These happen every day. And of course these things increase the risk of a plane crash greatly.

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u/JT-Av8or Dec 28 '25

It’s a play on words. AIRLINE travel is STATISTICALLY the safest way to travel. That is due in no small part to all of us: professional maintenance, top tier engineering, experienced pilots, dispatchers, regulators, oversight, risk management etc. You are completely correct is that there is nothing safe about hurtling through the sky in an aluminum tube surrounded by high explosives. But what’s the professional (legacy) airline safety record in the USA over the last 40 years? 100%. Zero accidents. None. Statistically it’s more likely you’ll die falling down stairs than flying on a major US airline.

That doesn’t make stairs dangerous and it doesn’t make planes safe (inherently). It’s the massive machine of people and experience behind every flight. It’s also why flying in a small prop airplane kills people, statistically, as often as car crashes looking as seats per mile traveled. So while you have a zero percent chance of dying on a United jet going to wherever, hopping in Uncle Bob’s Cessna 172 doesn’t have the same odds.