There is a good chance that every time that plane taxis down the runway and picks up speeds of over 240 kph to take off, those turbulent moments just before it gets to a comfortable cruising altitude will lead you to wonder: just how safe is air travel?

It’s a question almost every traveller has asked themselves since Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan disappeared without a trace in 1937 as they attempted to circle the globe.

Forget about ancient disappearances for a second; you could attribute that to the fact that earlier planes weren’t as technologically advanced as they are today. However, there are some recent occurrences that would give travellers reasons to fret:

• Entire air crafts disappearing into the Indian Ocean
• Commercial airliners being shot down while crossing international warzones
• High profile crashes that occur due to seemingly preventable reasons
• Bad weather causing hours of delays as flights are grounded
• Volcanic ash making it impossible to fly

Then there are mind boggling myths to deal with as well. Whether or not you can be sucked into an aircraft toilet or any plane that has row 13 is cursed notwithstanding, flying to and from your desired destinations brings with it a flurry of concerns. It could all be because flying is quite frankly unnatural for humans. We weren’t built to fly, period!!

Why air travel is still the safest means of transportation

Just because we weren’t designed with wings doesn’t necessarily mean that we weren’t meant to fly. Thanks to the Wright Brothers, the fact that we do not have wings doesn’t mean we can’t take to the skies.

Yes, there have been some perilous times for aeronautical travel over the years and there is a good chance that there are still some serious challenges to come as we try to perfect this mode of transportation. However, despite all those issues the aviation industry faces, one thing is for certain – air travel is still the fastest and safest way to get from point A to The Maldives and back.

They say numbers don’t lie and the numbers say that: your chances of dying in a plane crash are about as slim as one in 11,000,000. Those are good odds by any standard. In fact, you are more likely to get hit by lightning than you are to suffer a plane crash in your entire lifetime.

Now if that doesn’t make you feel any better about flying then here are five other excellent reasons why flying is still the best, fastest and safest means of transportation for travellers across the globe.

Planes are infinitely safer

Every day, there are about 93,000 commercial flights across the globe. Now ask yourself, how often do you hear of a plane crashing? If you think about it, 93,000 commercial flights every single day and we can still go weeks, if not months, without hearing about a fatal plane crash makes your odds of being in an ill-fated plane infinitesimally small by all standards.

Furthermore, should you be unlucky enough to be on-board a flight that goes down, you still have very good chances of surviving the landing. According to studies, 95.7% of passengers on-board all crashed planes survived.

Plane tickets are getting cheaper by the day

Although it might not seem like it, plane tickets have actually been getting cheaper as the years go by. Today, thanks to stiff competition in the industry and the fact that you can shop around and use highly efficient platforms to get bargains on all things flight tickets, you can actually make great savings on your air travels than on any other means of transportation.

It is easier to book flights now

Flight bookings have become incredibly easier to make. All you have to do is find a platform like TravelStart that has a listing of all popular flights every single day and you can digitally book your flight at any given time. You can also use the same platform to get unbelievable discounts on said flight bookings.

Each flight has a professional team behind it

Every time a plane takes off it has a plethora of highly trained professionals looking out for it. From the pilots to the flight crew and the air traffic control crew…not to mention the navigational instruments on the plane itself. These are all people and things that work tirelessly to make your flight pleasant and most importantly, safe.

A little something called ‘Availability Heuristic’

No, that has nothing to do with just how many flights are available to you should you want to head down to Dubai in the next few minutes – although it is easy to see why many would assume that to be the case. Availability Heuristic is a mental shortcut that tends to rely on immediately available examples that come to memory as opposed to drawing a conclusion using complete data.

A good example can be derived from something we have already mentioned in this piece. When we said that 95.7% of passengers in all crashed planes have survived there is a good chance that you completely disagreed with that fact or at the very least took it with a grain of salt. That is Availability Heuristic in action.

The reason you may have had such a hard time believing that statement is because the immediate memory you have of plane crashes involve total fatalities. Maybe it is the Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 disappearance or it is the shooting down of commercial flight MH17 that is still fresh in your mind. Because both these tragedies garnered great press coverage and they both had fatalities, your mind immediately associates aeronautical crashes with total fatalities no matter what the actual data says.

Long story short, those fears might just be in your mind. They are not as bad as you think they are and planes are getting safer and more comfortable by the day.

Technology, rigorous training and in-flight entertainment all go towards making flying the best, fastest and safest mode of transportation for avid travellers across the globe. So what are you waiting for? Book your next flight today and get a wonderful deal on the ticket prices.