Maximum security in the air - required if we should continue to dare

Yesterday was a sad day for aviation, with the accident that this time affected the Spanair MD-82 at Barajas. As terrible as it is for the ones, and their families and freinds, involved in an accident, as easy it is for the rest of us to start questioning the risks with flying. After having been grounded 4 days after September 11 I started to reflect on the risks associated with flying and the feelings of entering a plane again after a recent accident. If you have a flight coming up in the near future it might help to turn to http://www.airsafe.com/ for some facts on the risk that you are exposed to that could balance your concerns.

Contrary to my own thoughts there are quite a large number of major airlines that never have experienced an accident with fatal outcome out of which some are listed here:
EUROPE: AerLingus (Ireland), Austrian Airlines, EasyJet (UK), Finnair, IcelandAir, SN Brussels, Virgin Atlantic
ASIA: EVA Air (Taiwan), Quantas (Australia)
US & CANADA: American Trans Air, Hawaiaan Airlines, Jet Blue, Southwest
LATIN AMERICA : Air Jamaica, Allegro Airlines,
AFRICA & MIDDLE EAST: Emirates, Tunis air

The plane in the world that has done the larghest number of flights worldwide is Boeing 737. Since it was taken into service, 127 million flights has been completed and resulted in an average of 0.37 fatal accidents per 1 million flights made. The most widely used commercial jest all show figues below 1 fatal accidents per million flights. This applies both to very small planes like SAAB 340 (0.19) as well as large ones like Boeing 747 (0.79)

After having gone through the statistics I was encourged to find out that:
* My most frequently used airlines, SAS & Lufthansa, are amoing the safer ones.
* The MD-82, common on national routes, is not an especially affected airplane type
* There are three major plane models that never have been involved in a fatal accident: Boeing 777, Airbus A330 and Airbus 340
* There is no direct correlation between an airlines average flight age and their accident rates, i.e. no point of avoiding airlines with an old fleet like Northwest.

So I'll call the travel agency tomorrow and book my upcoming flights to Bonn and Amsterdam, and hope that the oil prices continue down. I am keen to see that the airlines soon will get some financial relief, so that they can focus/invest in maintaining maximum security rather than just sending big road-warrior driven checks straight to oil producers, with the Airlines primarily acting as a money transaction centeral.