Recent crashes are nothing more than a coincidence, experts say

Taiwan, 23rd July-2014, Ben Mutzabaugh: The crash of a TransAsia Airways turboprop in Taiwan has been in the media headlines today, coming just six days after the July 17 tragedy involving Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

Recent crashes are nothing more than a coincidence, experts say

But while the crashes may have come just a few days apart, industry experts say it’s a nothing more than a coincidence.

“Air travel remains safe,” says Henry Harteveldt, aviation and travel industry analyst at Atmosphere Research Group in San Francisco. “The facts show it is safer than any other form of transportation.”

“Unfortunately, we just had two terrible, unrelated aviation accidents occur,” Harteveldt adds. “Obviously the Malaysian plane was shot out of the sky. And the TransAsia incident was an incident where the airplane crashed in bad weather. These are two unrelated events.”

Jon Beatty, Flight Safety Foundation President and CEO, agreed.

“Commercial aviation has reached incredible levels of safety in the past decades but we still see occasional accidents or incidents such as these,” Beatty says. “These are tragedies, but commercial aviation is still extremely safe.”

While crashes of commercial passenger jets have become rare, it’s not unprecedented for them to occur within a short time period.

(Input source: USA Today)