I like aviation news. I watch Blancolirio regularly. I fly a Comanche 250.
I am frustrated about how every aircraft accident draws national attention, often for several days on legacy media. At the same time there are hundreds of fatalaties in automobiles and motorcycles and bicycles that don’t move the meter. Some people are killed by cars while sitting on their porch or even while asleep in their beds.
Although I can speculate on the reasons for this discrepancy, I am still left wondering why.
It’s like the difference between Bear Attacks and Shark attacks.
A shark bites a surfer’s leg and it’s national news.
A bear eats a camper and it doesn’t even get a mention..........
You know why. Same reason gun deaths are reported but more people die from obesity, blunt instruments and auto crashes than guns.
Cars collide routinely. Cars hitting houses isn’t necessarily uncommon.
Planes crashing into houses? That’s notable. Do homeowners policies cover planes & space debris? I’d think so, but it sure would be a problem if they didn’t.
I think it’s fair to day that per passenger mile commerical aviation is much safer than automobile travel, but “general aviation”, especially by private pilots, is much more dangerous than auto travel.
Commercial Airline Deaths: ~0.003 per 100 million passenger miles.
Driving Deaths: ~0.57–1.11 per 100 million vehicle miles.
General Aviation Safety: 0.7-0.9 per 100,000 flight hours or about 4-5 per 100 million miles, assuming an average speed of 150 kt.
Aviation accidents tend to be more dramatic, and often involve celebrities, like John Denver, or Roy Halladay.
It is interesting that 14 major league baseball players have died in aviation accidents, and although major league teams take about 25 flights per season, no major league team has ever been involved in a fatal accident as a team. General aviation death is a disease of the affluent.
FWIW, at the current fatality rate, one would expect to lose one major league player every 300 years due to team travel on commerical air, or one team every 100,000 years.
People aren't supposed to fly. Plus they are likely richer than the dead in auto accidents.