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It's official: flying is so safe, it's hard to measure

The National Transportation Safety Board has released its final 2012 statistics:

Part 121 commercial airline operations remained fatality-free, and general aviation accidents were virtually unchanged. In the general aviation segment, the number of total accidents was 1,470 in 2011 and 1,471 in 2012. Fatalities decreased slightly, from 448 to 432, and the accident rate per 100,000 flight hours declined from 6.84 to 6.78. On-demand Part 135 operations showed improvement, with decreases across all measures, the NTSB said.

Part 121 refers to the section of the Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs) involving scheduled commercial passenger service. What these statistics mean is, in 2012, you had a better chance of dying doing anything else than flying on a commercial airliner.

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