"If you see a child in the airport today or tomorrow...that child has a greater chance of growing up to be president than failing to reach his or her destination safely.".
Nice...comparison?

Does anyone remember what month/year it was when that woman had some sort of stroke or heart attack on the plane? I remember it was a big deal for awhile because the rumors were that the flight crew either refused oxygen or the tanks were empty, not that she was overweight and extremely unhealthy to the point where she shouldn't have been flying.

Anyone that flies in the next week is crazy. It's been jinxed. There is surely to be a plane crash soon.

@JohnnySLC: Shut it, you, I'm flying to Vegas on Wednesday!

@JohnnySLC:

Wasn't there a big crash recently...in CO I think?

They do something right and still you take the opportunity to bash them.

Yay? *looks around, concerned*

@LorneReams: It was a slide off of the runway; no fatalities.

>Said an MIT professor who studies aviation safety, in a remark both whimsical and macabre, "If you see a child in the airport today or tomorrow...that child has a greater chance of growing up to be president than failing to reach his or her destination safely."<

Umm... That's two outcome conditions. The statement is only satisfied if the child doesn't die, AND the child reaches their destination.

Chances of the airline killing the child? Very small. Chances of failing to get the child to their destination? Somewhat larger, knowing the airlines.

I think the airlines have still had people die in the last couple of years:

[consumerist.com]

[consumerist.com]

It's just that the airlines didn't do the killing (at least as far as we can tell).

@RandomHookup: Those were "technically" foreign carriers.

It seems like the study deals with other than people kicking the bucket on a plane and more with things like negative impact into terrain.

You forgot to include a link to the masturbating passenger. I would actually prefer that be included in all airline stories.

Thanks.

What about the people in DJ AM and that Blink 182 guy's plane?

@calquist: Private plane. Doesn't count

We all know this is because they have a policy of continuing CPR until the plane has landed and the not-technically-dead-yet passenger has been removed from the aircraft, right?

@calquist:

I think that was a charter flight. The study only counts deaths amongst the unwashed masses.

Alright, this blog is getting to the point of being unreadable with its negativity. Where is the negative consumerist issue with people not dying? Shouldn't this be lauded as an amazing safety win for every consumer, whereby they have an infinitely greater chance at being killed while driving to the airport than in flying itself?

I think the skepticism comes in as 1) this fact was being touted by the airline industry and 2) we all know they never sku facts to present positive statistics about themselves. ;)

So its not "negativity"- its good old fashioned skepticism-- which is a GOOD thing.

@JohnnySLC:

No! I'm flying for the first time EVER this weekend. I'm already terrified!

@JGKojak:

1. The stats aren't from the airline industry, they're kept by the federal gov't.

2. If you think the airlines and gov't are somehow "hiding" fatal crashes, you have tremendous respect for the ability of the airlines and gov't to keep a secret.

3. It's spelled "skew." SKU is an acronym.

No one is dyin' cause no one is flyin'

@BlackMage is doing the Time Warp agaaaaaaain!!!: That was the first thing I thought when I read this. Maybe it doesn't count because it was from "natural" causes?

Can the air traffic controllers get some credit? Despite being overworked and overpaid, we're doing our job and ensuring safety.

Wow thanks... hope my two flights this week are not jinxed... ewr and fll.

@Mr_Mantastic:

"Despite being overworked and overpaid"

Pre-Reagan, yes, but not since.

"If you see a child in the airport today or tomorrow...that child has a greater chance of growing up to be president than failing to reach his or her destination safely."

Wait, those actually sound like pretty good odds. Am I misreading that, or is that not a good thing?

@JohnnySLC: Didn't Consumerist do a story like this last year too? I remember it because it was right before I was about to take a flight... and then the same thing this year again right before I'm about to take a flight. The timing is torturing my anxiety!

@Mr_Mantastic:

Haha I meant UNDERPAID!

This is stupidly flippant article.

"The Consumerist" is moving away from performing a useful service by flagging systemic shortcomings and into negativity territory, whereby an individually brainless manager magically becomes representative of an entire organisation or - in this case - a positive outcome is snidely flamed.

"Airlines fail to kill passengers" - pretty pathetic stuff

@PorkchopSandwiches!_GitEmSteveDave: DRTFL before I posted, but American is definitely a US carrier, even though it was an international flight.

@Bruce Bayliss: This here interwebs has been around for at least a decade. That's 9 years more than it should have taken for you to get acquainted with the concept of snark.

Perhaps you'd find the comfort and safety of AOL more to your liking?

@Mr_Mantastic:

I was just thinking I need to switch careers. We make good money in my field, but I've never heard a coworker refer to himself as "overpaid"!

It's a good outcome handled badly by the MIT professor.

Hard to die when the planes never get off the ground.

what about the story where a woman passed away naturally in her seat next to a passenger and was left there until the plan landed? Last 2 years or before?

Nobody wants to read about a safe landing.

@Luke Chatburn: Key word is "safely". He didn't say that they'd get there on time or satisfied with the airline's performance.

@Counterpoint: You're right. I sent a story about a week ago about Hewlett Packard sending me a brand new laptop because they screwed up and it never made it on the site.

Perhaps if the story was about HP having crappy customer service, it would be on here within minutes.

I suppose it puts getting stuck on the tarmac in perspective. I'd rather arrive safely and have some incidents of tarmac stuckage than the other way around.

I also wonder if the number of incidents of getting stuck for hours has truly gone up or just been reported publicly to venues like Consumerist more often. Just a thought.

At its best, this site is pro-consumer. At its worst, it's just anti-business. Here's a case of it as anti-business. Nobody thinks US airlines are at the pinnacle of customer care, but when they do something well for the customer (not killing them) and you still bash them, you lose some of your ability to influence their future actions. Good work deserves rewards, not punishment.

I agree with some of the others here complaining about the tone of the post. And lame title for the article. It lessens Ben's and Consumerist's credibility, I think. I mean, it's funny and sarcastic in a Gizmodo way, but unhelpful and mean spirited.

@cromartie:
There's responsible journalism and irresponsible journalism, interwebs or not.

This is NOT responsible journalism -it's closer to the polemicisms that you see on Fox

Doesn't this now mean that there's the greatest chance ever that there will be a fatality?

All these complaints about the results, the methodology, or the story here...and no one's asked "Who's the cute redhead holding the ticket?" yet.

Oops.

@tbax929: I hope you're not 31 or older: [www.faa.gov]

@Jay: No, that's not how probabilities work.

Great! Can we have those OSHA-like signs at the Gates stating "It's been ___ days since the last FATALITY on this Airline".

That's right, I'm one of those people that didn't get killed by an airline. That photo up there proves it... well, it proves they didn't kill my wife anyway.