The headlines in the past year have been dominated by air tragedies, making air travel feel less safe than it actually is and an app has been launched to calm those irrational fears.
While it may initially sound in poor taste,
Am I Going Down? calculates the chances of the plane you are travelling on crashing, using historical data and statistical probability.
To use the app, simply enter your flight details and the app will give you the chances that the plane, and its nervous passengers, will make it safely to its destination.
Co-founder and developer of the company behind the app, Nic Johns, said his wife is a nervous flyer, which prompted the idea.
“The original inspiration for
Am I Going Down? comes from my wife (and co-founder of Vanilla Pixel), Julie,” Johns told the
Daily Mail.
“Her fear of flying has always made travelling difficult, so I wanted to make an app that demonstrates - after entering airline, aircraft and flight details - that flying is in fact extremely safe.
“As a typical example, flying on a British Airways 747-400 from London to New York has a one in nine million chance of crashing... not quite as long odds as winning the National Lottery, but not far off,” Johns said.
Another example notes that, if you flew a Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong to Los Angeles every day you would be incident-free for 11,146 years.
More than 10 million routes have been assessed for the app using data sources such as the Geneva-based Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives, the United States National Transportation Safety Board and the International Civil Aviation Organisation, based in Canada.
"For my analysis I only include crashes where there was at least one passenger fatality -- which is the relevant stat for those with a fear of flying," Johns told
CNN.
"I then incorporate the volume of flights, weighted to the most recent 10 years, to provide the final 'one in a million' statistics."
