Should We Invest More in Airline Safety?

Image: Phil Broad

On May 19, EgyptAir Flight 804 crashed into the Mediterranean Sea, killing all 66 on board. The past couple of years have seen a spate of fatal aviation incidents, and questions have been raised about the safety of air travel. 

There is no doubting that any great fear about air travel is thoroughly unwarranted. Statistically, aviation is safer today than at any previous time in its history. It is also often noted that flying by plane is the safest form of transportation. The chances of dying in a plane crash are calculated to be around 1 in 11 million; you are orders of magnitude more likely to be involved in a fatal car or traffic accident. 

At the same time, calls for greater aviation security and safety measures abound. Governments and corporations around the world have invested large sums of money into tightening security at airports and protecting planes against all manner of threats, from terrorism to mechanical failure to pilot error.

Many of these measures, particularly those at airports, have come at the cost of passengers’ convenience and time. More important, however, is that ever greater spending on reducing air travel deaths may divert resources that could have been more effectively employed elsewhere—such as in making our roads less dangerous, for example. 

As aviation is already so much safer than other modes of transport, we are forced to think carefully about the extent to which it is wise to invest more into greater screening at airports and more extensive safety on planes. 

It may seem to be a false dilemma to suggest that spending on air safety comes at the expense of, say, road safety—it is not. The fundamental problem of economics is that we have “limited resources and unlimited wants”; at some stage money spent on protecting us from airline disasters is money not spend on protecting us from mishaps on the road. 

In managing limited resources, and with the focus on saving lives, we must think carefully about how to get the most out of every dollar that is being spent. Fundamentally, we should be aiming to spend in areas where the cost of saving a life is the least. 

To some, it may seem callous, even repulsive, to juxtapose money and human life. Efforts to “value” a human life in monetary terms are indeed controversial. That, however, is not what is being advocated. Instead, the emphasis here is strictly on saving lives, while keeping in mind that this must be done in an effective manner. 

We typically see diminishing returns in economics. In reducing airline incidents, the so-called “law of diminishing marginal returns” implies that each additional dollar spent on safety will yield a lesser improvement than the previous dollar. 

Colossal sums of money have already been spent to ensure airline safety, especially in comparison to, say, automobile safety. It is quite likely that additional investment into safety for airlines will do less good than an equal amount spent toward automobile safety.  

Of course, air crashes are quite dramatic, and if there were mass hysteria about the safety of airline travel this in itself would impose a cost worth mitigating. There is, however, no such mass hysteria at present. Even if there were, money would be better spent reassuring people that airlines are already safe than it would on almost superfluous security measures. 

Too often, we see a focus on the sensational which results in valuable resources being diverted from solving mundane issues which often are objectively more impactful. As a society with limited resources, we must think carefully about efficiency and not allow headlines to override sound analysis.  


A version of this article also appeared in the South China Morning Post's Young Post on Thursday, May 26. http://yp.scmp.com/news/features/article/103542/malaysia-airlines-egyptair-should-we-invest-more-airplane-safety