Woman Partially Sucked Out of Jet When Window Breaks Mid-Flight; Plane Lands Safely in Philadelphia

[regnaD kciN]

63. To put this in perspective...

...this is the first passenger fatality on a major (i.e. non-commuter) U.S. airline in over nine years. And it was a death toll of one. I remember, fifty-odd years ago, it was uncommon for a couple of months to go by without an entire aircraft going down with no survivors.

Air travel on U.S. carriers, in the mid-2010s, has become almost unbelievably safe. Those who are reacting to this tragedy by vowing they'll avoid flying in the future, or expressing fear about having to take a flight, really need to look at the facts of the matter rather than just get traumatized by a news story. If circumstances required me to do so, I'd have no qualms whatsoever in flying Southwest — and even sitting in a window seat just behind the engine — every day for the next year.