A brand new MIT study shows that flying will turn into safer over the course of the last decade

Flight price, departure times, flight duration – these are the standard considerations for travelers who need to book a flight.

But now increasingly persons are taking note of a brand new factor: the aircraft itself.

One in five travellers said they’re doing more research on the aircraft they need to fly on before booking, while barely more (22%) said they’ll limit their air travel for the remainder of the 12 months, in line with a survey conducted by the Digital analytics company Quantum Metric.

Overall, 55 percent of travelers said that they had modified their booking behavior attributable to current news about aircraft and airlines, the survey shows.

Boeing was not mentioned directly within the survey, but since a door panel was blown out of an Alaska Airlines plane on January 5, 2024, regular media coverage of the corporate – from its quality control to its business ethos – has dominated headlines.

These stories have drawn consumer attention to Boeing's aircraft, a market that travelers had previously ignored, says Danielle Harvey, global vp and head of travel and hospitality strategy at Quantum Metric.

“Our research suggests that passengers are doing more research to better understand Boeing aircraft and potentially avoid them,” she said.

The survey also found that 13% of respondents avoid low-cost airlines to feel safer when flying.

“But that doesn’t make sense,” says Brendan Sobie, independent aviation analyst and founding father of Sobie Aviation.

“First, there are more low-cost airlines operating Airbus (A320) than Boeing (737), especially in Asia,” he said. “And the Boeing problems obviously affect all airlines, regardless of their business model.”

As disturbing because the recent headlines about Boeing Be that as it could, aviation safety is improving from decade to decade, says Arnold Barnett, professor of statistics on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-author of a Research on the risks of business flights.

The paper, published in August within the Journal of Air Transport Management, said the chance of dying on a business flight was 1 in 13.7 million passengers worldwide between 2018 and 2022 – a big improvement over the previous decade and a far cry from the one death per 350,000 passengers between 1968 and 1977.

Commercial safety standards might be judged by a lot of metrics—from mileage to flight hours—but in line with MIT News, Barnett selected “deaths per boarding passenger” since it answers an easy query: If you have got a boarding pass for an airplane, what are the probabilities of dying?

According to MIT News, Barnett cites several aspects which have made flying safer. These include “technological advances such as collision avoidance systems on airplanes, extensive training, and the consistent work of organizations such as the Federal Aviation Agency and the National Transportation Safety Board.”

However, the report notes geographical differences that divide the world into three categories when it comes to flight safety:

• Level 1: United States, European Union and other parts of Europe, in addition to Australia, Canada, China, Israel, Japan and New Zealand
• Tier 2: Bahrain, Bosnia, Brazil, Brunei, Chile, Hong Kong, India, Jordan, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Qatar, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
• Level 3: All other countries

According to MIT researchers, the chance of death on Level 1 and a pair of flights will drop to 1 per 80 million passengers between 2018 and 2022.

In Tier 3 countries, the chance of death was 36 times higher than in Tier 1 countries between 2018 and 2022, the report said. But even in those countries, the variety of deaths per boarding almost halved during that period, Barnett noted.

The study is a historical evaluation of business aviation safety and doesn’t predict how Boeing's problems might impact the long run.

However, Barnett indicated that he was confident concerning the future of business aviation.

“Although the Alaska Airlines incident was undoubtedly an emergency, the pilots responded immediately and landed the plane safely. So the incident shows that even when something goes horribly wrong, other elements of the flight safety system usually prevent a catastrophe,” he told CNBC Travel.

“Overall, this incident says more about the safety of flying than about its dangers,” he said.

Although competition between airlines is fierce, aircraft manufacturing has long been dominated by the century-old US company Boeing and its European rival Airbus. Together, the 2 corporations manufacture just about all large passenger aircraft.

This makes it possible to avoid Boeing brand aircraft. but not necessarily easyHowever, quite a few platforms, from Kayak to Alternative Airlines, allow travelers to filter flights by aircraft, an option added after two Boeing 737 Max planes crashed inside six months in 2018 and 2019.

Among those that need to fly only with Airbus or avoid Boeing's 737 Max aircraft, this might be easier for some than others, Harvey said.

“Some airlines have a significant number of Boeing aircraft in their fleet, so people may have to switch airlines,” she said. “For the average traveler, that's not a problem, but for frequent flyers looking to upgrade their status, that may be less attractive and therefore more difficult to implement.”

However, there isn’t any guarantee.

After Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed on March 10, 2019, I paid a further four-figure sum in order that my family could fly from Singapore to the USA to avoid having to travel on a Boeing 737 Max.

Before the departure date, the airline communicated by email minor changes to the departure time in addition to one other change that may not have been an issue before: a change of aircraft.

The recent aircraft? A Boeing 737 Max.