News stories about airplane accidents are common in the media, with articles that feature multiple fatalities leading the way. Human tragedies are a legitimate public concern, and the media is happy to provide the details. But surviving an air accident is far more common than media reports might lead one to believe. In the United States, about 95 percent of the passengers and crew who were involved in the more than 650 major carrier accidents that occurred from 1983 to 2002 survived. Some 55 percent survived in "serious" accidents (those involving heavy structural damage and life-threatening conditions). Throughout the world, the survival rate of an airplane accident is 90 percent.

In part, these findings reflect the diversity of accidents from planes that skid more or less harmlessly off the runway on landing to planes that crash head-on into a mountain. Obviously, lower-impact crashes generally increase passengers' chances for survival. But even in...