Both as a politician and a helicopter pilot, my heart sinks every time there is a tragedy like this one, that took from us Andhra Pradesh CM Y.S.R. Reddy as well as his officials and his crew. While aviation accidents happen around the world, India seems to have a particularly tragic record involving political heavyweights.

In recent years, Madhavrao Scindia, G.M. Balayogi, O.P. Jindal and others have been suddenly snatched away in this manner. Every time such a tragedy happens, there is a wave of sensationalist discussion — rarely is there a sober, dispassionate analysis. This often leads to a general criticism of aviation safety that is at best uninformed, and at its worst actually exacerbates matters.

Let us look at the facts on the relative safety of various kinds of non-military air transport, and between aviation and road travel. Safety statistics are widely monitored by several international agencies: in the US, by the Federal Aviation Agency and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB, which also covers road, rail and other modes of transportation); in the UK by its Civil Aviation Authority and in India by the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation or DGCA.

The most comprehensive data is from the NTSB, an analysis of which has led one writer to conclude that “in the US 1 out of 6800 drivers dies in an auto accident. The rate for airline passengers is 1 in 1.6 million ...each year there are about 40,000 deaths per year in automobile accidents vs about 200 in air transport. To put this in perspective, the chance of dying in an automobile accident is about 1000 times more than winning a typical state lottery in a year.”

... contd.