Remembering ‘Flight’s First Fatal Trip’
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 07.30.08 | 11:03 AM ET
September 17 will mark the 100th anniversary of the first-ever death of an airplane passenger, Thomas E. Selfridge. Orville Wright piloted the plane, and Matthew L. Wald looks back at the tragic flight (pictured) and its legacy. Air travel, as we’ve noted, has become very safe.
Wald writes:
The arc of safety improvements has been dramatic. Boeing, reaching back to the beginning of the jet age, found one fatal accident for every 30,000 commercial jet flights in 1959. By 2006, the rate for all airliner flights had dropped to one accident for every 4.2 million flights by Western-built commercial jets.
Related on World Hum:
* 2007: Safest Year for Air Travel Since 1963
Photo of crash: Public domain.
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
