August 8, 2009

If you're as scared of flying as I am, you'll therefore be as delighted as I was with the Daily Mail for this today.

A short excerpt:

"But flying is not risk-free, much as the airlines would like to persuade you otherwise. Flying is only the 'safest form of travel' if you take passenger miles into account - a dubious statistic, as by definition flights tend to be long-distance.

If you look at deaths per million journeys or per million hours - the more meaningful figures used by the airline insurance industry - flying fares rather less well, coming out worse than car or train travel, but still safer than cycling or motorcycling.

So, given that air crashes do appear to be generating more headlines than normal at the moment, what can you do to avoid becoming another one of the statistics? Well, studies have proved that following a few simple rules will improve your chances of landing safely at the other end.

First, never, ever, fly with an airline you have never heard of, particularly in Africa, the former USSR, or Indonesia. If the plane looks dodgy or the pilot looks drunk - a surprisingly common occurrence in some parts of the world - don't get on.

I'm due on a China Airways flight from Amsterdam to Bangkok in thirty days time.

Anyone ever flown with them?