There are clear benefits to this process

It lends perspective. It demands respect. It requires that we pay heed and recalibrate how we function. The search for answers around the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 continues to generate an outsize amount of attention for an airplane tragedy a subject that already mands a disproportionate level of public concern. This has been true for decades: A mid-1990s analysis of New York Times front-page stories found that there were 1,382 stories per 10,000 U.S. deaths involving mercial jets. For car accidents, it was less than one story per 10,000 deaths. The obsession with airline crashes in part reflects their rarity, even on the benighted Malaysia Airlines.silk road culture tour According to data up to the middle of last decade, Malaysia's flag carrier had suffered two fatal crashes in 1.8 million flights—an accident rate better than Air France, KLM, or Swissair at the time. The incredibly impressive safety record of air travel worldwide is a testament to the success of an unheralded American export: our regulations governing aircraft and airport safety. To land in the U.S., a plane and the airport where the flight originated have to meet Federal Aviation Administration standards. This means conforming to guidelines about the weight of cockpit doors, the quality of the exit lighting, and the number of defibrillators on board, among other things. Ditto for the European Union,china tour packages and both the EU and the U.S. regularly ban airlines from flying into their jurisdictions if their home authorities don't meet the standards.There are clear benefits to this process, safer air travel chief among them. But the unintended consequences also suggest that exporting American regulations around the world could cost more lives than it saves. The macabre but exhaustive website planecrashinfo put the odds of being killed on a single airline flight at about one in 4.7 million across 78 major world airlines; among the airlines with the worst safety records, the odds rise to one in 2 million. In the middle of the last decade, the fatal crash rate for Kenya Airways was about three in 1 million. For Ethiopian Airlines, it was four in 1 million. That's higher than that of U.S. carriers such as American Airlines 0.6 fatal crashes per 1 million flights or United 0.5 per million but it still suggests flying is safe, and that the gap between poor and rich countries is small.