Safety in Numbers

P: At Croydon, England, a befogged French freight plane struck a wireless mast, skimmed housetops, wrecked two garages, killed the pilot and mechanic.

P: At Colon, Panama the motor of an Army amphibian exploded, hurled a jagged piece of metal into the stomach of Private Ralph H. Lawson, killed him.

P: At Yarrellton, Tex. two Army privates from Randolph Field died when their plane crashed.

P: At Hodgkins, Ill. Edwin Weatherdon, Chief Pilot of American Airways, onetime-New York University fullback, crashed to death in a blind-flight training plane.

P: At Managua, Nicaragua an Atlantic Coast Airways plane cracked up in a forced landing, drowned Mechanic Jack Odum of Abingdon, Va.

P: At Richmond, Va. President Alexander M. Luke of Hawthorne Flying Service of Charleston, S. C. went up in a plane, jumped 1,500 ft. without a parachute, left a widow and two daughters.

P: At El Paso, Tex. Harry L. Sexton, onetime confidential secretary to Vice President Garner, was killed in a plane which crashed and burned.

P: At Newcastle, Ind. two men were incinerated when their plane caught fire, fell flaming into a patch of woods.

P: At Torrington, Conn. George C. McGinley, an aeronautical inspector for the Department of Commerce, was cremated when his plane developed motor trouble, crashed and burned.

P: At San Diego, Calif. Thomas Jenkins & friend dipped a plane in salute, caught a wing in some telephone wires, crashed fatally.

Such were last week's aviation casualties. Because the danger of flight is not willingly publicized by aviation companies, few laymen can get exact information about the risks involved. Last week the risks were discussed in an article entitled "Flying Is Still Dangerous" in The American Mercury by Kenneth Brown Collings, Wartime Navy flyer, onetime mail pilot, flight instructor and airport manager, author of Flight Hazard. Some of Author Collings' statements: Average age of airline pilots is 32. Average men of 32 engaged in normal ground occupations die at the rate of less than 3 per 1,000 per year. Airline pilots die at the rate of 25 per 1,000. But--the average pilot flies only about 800 hr. per year. Hence:

A given hour spent as a passenger-carrying pilot in scheduled air-transport operation is about 88 times more likely to result fatally than the same hour spent on the ground. Pilots who carry mail & express but no passengers run a risk about 95 times normal; Army & Navy pilots, 170 times normal; Marine pilots, 480 times normal.

On scheduled U. S. air transport lines the extra hazard per hour of passenger flight is approximately 66 times that of normal ground occupations. Scheduled air transport in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands approaches that of the U. S. in safety. In Great Britain it is "possibly twice as hazardous"; in France and Mexico, at least five times as hazardous.

Chief source of Author Collings' data: The Actuarial Society of America, which has spent several years studying U. S. War, Navy and Commerce Department records.

Quick to pounce on Author Collings' conclusions was the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce of America. Said the Chamber: "Anything can be done with figures." To prove that flying is little more risky than motoring, the Chamber quoted the comparative insurance premiums covering the New York Metropolitan area (based on figures compiled by U. S. Aviation Underwriters): $102 per $10,000 per year for public liability for a motorcar; $110 for a pilot with 250 hr. or more.

Nevertheless, the Chamber admitted that in 1931 the chances of being killed in air transport were estimated by railroad statisticians to be 400 times the chances of being killed when traveling by rail. But air travel is getting safer every year. In the first six months of 1933, miles flown per fatal accident in scheduled operations totaled 5,172,424 as compared to 2,242,583 in the corresponding period of the previous year.

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