Death in the Books

How safe is flying? Last week the Actuarial Society of America's Committee on Aviation issued a 41-page answer, combed from its gloomy ledgers of death in the air. The Committee found a big 1931 improvement in civilian flying and continued betterment in military and scheduled airline flying. On scheduled lines there was one fatality for every 19,346 passengers carried, against one in 17,396 in 1930, 3,314 in 1928. The air traveler need not expect to be killed before his 20,000th flight. On a passenger-mile basis he is reasonably certain of flying 4,600,000 mi. safely. It is still, statistically, 100 times as hazardous to fly on regular airways as to take a train but only four times as dangerous as riding in an automobile. Including one absent-minded person who stepped into a propeller, only 27 passengers were killed on U. S. airlines last year. In the first half of this year.

16 out of about 250,000 passengers carried were killed.

It is a different story if an amateur pilot invites you for a cross-country hop in his plane. By the law of averages you would be dead before your 4,000th flight-- five times as dangerous as scheduled airline flying. Contrary to popular opinion it is a trifle less dangerous to take sight-seeing flights or air taxis than to fly by transport plane, largely because "joy hops" are very short. Scheduled flights average between two and three hours, nonscheduled one-half to one hour.

Total U. S. deaths in the air dropped from 237 in 1930 to 183 last year. The committee attributed the drop to a 30% decline in nonscheduled commercial flying. Nearly one-fourth of all accidents on scheduled airlines last year were traced to bad weather, followed by structural failure, pilots' errors, motor failure.

Sponsored by insurance companies, the Actuarial Society endeavored without much success to segregate subgroups of pilots which would rank as good risks for insurance. Some companies now insure pilots by special arrangement, fixing the rate (always high) after a study of his particular type of flying. Among transport pilots the annual mortality rate runs between 20 and 25 per 1,000. Deaths among holders of limited commercial and private licenses occur about one-half as frequently but their rate per hour of flying is higher.

Most dangerous branch of service flying is the Marine Corps--rate for the last six months of 1931; 45 per 1,000.

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