“Everything was going fine until we just heard like a loud bang! Or like a boom. And I look up, and the air masks are, like, out, popped down.”
“And I looked to my left, and there’s just this huge gaping hole, on the left side where the window is.”
That’s how one passenger described to NBC News an incident on an Alaska Airlines flight that was forced to make an emergency landing in January after a door plug fell off the fuselage — leaving a hole in the side of the plane — in midair.
The Boeing aircraft, carrying 174 passengers and six crew members, was able to turn around and land safely back at Portland International Airport with no one seriously injured. But the high-profile incident prompted probes by both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board to determine whether Boeing had failed to ensure safety compliance.
And that was just the most highly visible of air incidents that have made headlines in the past year. Recent headlines have recounted nerve-wracking incidents on commercial flights, with planes making emergency landings or rolling off runways.
The NTSB defines an incident as "an occurrence other than an accident, associated with the operation of an aircraft, which affects or could affect the safety of operations."
A February survey from The Harris Poll suggests the American public is well aware of this media coverage. Three-quarters of those surveyed recognized at least one recent aviation incident.
Despite the abundance of coverage both in news and on social media, data shows that commercial flights have actually been steadily growing safer since the 1980s.
“We have one of the safest aviation systems in the world,” says Peter Knudson, a spokesperson for the NTSB. “You really have to look at the data from the 1980s, the early eighties, and then the data point here, and you see this kind of line that's pretty consistently dropping.”
But are in-flight incidents actually on the rise? No, according to data and experts in the field. So what is causing the idea that flying commercial is becoming more dangerous? Experts cite news coverage, social media attention and predisposition to flying anxiety as possible contributing factors.
What the data reveals
NBC looked at NTSB investigations of incidents on commercial flights from 1982 to 2023.
Data shows the number of incidents has declined fairly steadily since the 1980s. The yearly average for commercial incidents from 1982 to 1992 was 38.8 incidents, compared to 6.8 incidents from 2013 to 2023.
Impression of heightened risks: It's 'in the air'
Yet Knudson acknowledged that despite the decline shown by the data, news outlets continue to ask him why it seems like there have been so many incidents lately. As he says, that impression that commercial airline incidents are on the rise seems to be “in the air.”
“We're seeing, you know, some very high profile incidents — including the Alaska one, which of course got everybody's attention,” he said.
'We're not talking about logic'
Jonathan Bricker, an affiliate professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington who's been researching flight anxiety for over 25 years, says that knowing the safety statistics will not be enough to calm an anxious flyer.
Flying may statistically be safe, but "we’re not talking about logic, we’re not talking about statistics, that has zero influence on an anxious person’s perception of flying,” Bricker said.
How coverage might influence perception
Data from The Harris Poll suggests the heightened media attention on air incidents may be harmful to the public's perception of air travel. In their survey, nearly two-thirds of participants said that news stories about plane safety incidents make them feel unsafe flying.
Bricker noted, though, that people who are predisposed to flight anxiety anyway will often pay more attention to the incident coverage in the media.
"[People with a fear of flying] are also drawn to the stories, because that's a way to adapt," he says. "The problem is, that danger signaling is kicking in when it’s not necessary, when there’s no danger at all. There’s no objective danger of a plane crashing.”
What it looks like when the wheel of the plane falls off right before takeoff 😰 pic.twitter.com/xrlPkWkg1n
— Alexander J Johnson (@Alexander_CB45) October 13, 2022
The speed and intensity with which nonfatal — but sometimes scary — air incidents can get reported online contributes to people's rising anxiety, Bricker said.
“So what that [social media content about plane incidents] does, it speeds up, intensifies and amplifies the impact of media on people with anxiety. Now you have extremely rich, real video and audio of what happened or just happened on the plane. And because these are non-fatal incidents, it’s been possible to quickly disseminate this video and audio across the world.”
