It's been a grisly 12-month period for the airline industry — from the two Malaysia Airlines accidents to the latest horrifying video of the TransAsia crash, there's been no shortage of anxiety-producing aviation news. Other analysis from insurers shows a nearly $1 trillion risk exposure in aviation. So it's not that surprising that more travelers are paying attention to safety issues.
And now, of course, there's an app for that. It's called "Am I Going Down?" and it's an app that calculates the probability of an incident on a given flight.
Simply enter your flight origin and destination and equipment type and the app will provide the relative chances of an accident. The directness of the app is refreshing — the user clicks "Am I Going Down?" to determine the risk. The app also provides the timeframe in years for when, statistically speaking, the aircraft would crash.
In this example, the Airbus A330 would be expected to crash every 7,627 years. Not a bad risk to take, it would seem!
The app claims to have processed the relative risks of 10 million routes, and exists not to be a morbid reminder of death in an airborne metal tube but as a rational reminder of the low risk associated with modern air travel.
This is one great use of actual data. Prior to this analysis there was no easy way to grasp how safe a particular aircraft model was. The information is pulled from actual National Transporation Safety Administration (USA) and International Civic Aviation Organization crash data.
Gain some peace of mind — or not – by downloading the app here.
NB: Aircraft lightning storm image courtesy Shutterstock.