Commercial flights have become significantly safer in recent decades

According to figures from the Aviation Safety Network, in the 1970s, there were about 6 fatal airliner accidents for every million commercial flights. This meant about 1 in every 165,000 flights ended in a fatal accident.

As the chart shows, this figure has dropped steadily in the last 50 years. According to the latest data, it is now about half a fatality per million flights. This means that, on average, it now takes more than 2 million flights for a fatal accident to occur.

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