When a person boards a private aircraft, he or she might be afraid about the safety of the flight. This might be because the journey is being made not on the ground but in the air. But, air passengers should not be afraid. Air travel has turned out to be one of the safest modes of transportation.

More than three million people fly using around the world safely every day. It has been found that flying in a commercial jet are twenty two times safer than travelling in a car in the United States according to a study by the U. S. National Safety Council made in 1993-95. In this study, accident fatalities per million passenger-miles travelled have been compared between different modes of transportation. It has been found that the number of fatalities on the US highway in atypical six month period is around 21,000. This figure equals the number of death occurred due to air accidents all over the world in the last forty years of commercial jet aviation. This figure would give you an idea regarding the level of safety being maintained in air travel. If you consider the figures for the USA alone, then it would be found fewer people have died in commercial air flights over the past sixty years than are killed in auto accidents in a typical three month period. In 2000, 41,800 people died in US traffic accidents whereas only 878 people died in commercial plane accident in the United States.

Improving the safety standards in air travel is a continuing process. In this effort, all people concerned are involved. They include pilots' group, civil aviation associations, government regulatory authorities like US Federal Aviation Administration or International Civil Aviation Organization, and plane operators. They are all cooperating for the creation of initiatives and programs that focus on safety issues and accident prevention. The ultimate goal in this effort is to improve commercial air travel safety all over the world.

Thirty years ago, fatal accidents in commercial jet flight used to occur approximately once in every 140 million miles flown. Now, this figure has improved to 1.4 billion miles for every fatal accident, which is a tenfold improvement in safety.

It is expected that the number of people availing of air travel would continue to increase and air traffic is expected to double in the next twenty years. Therefore, more effort would be required to make air travel even safer.