READ THIS FIRST
These are lifetime odds. The flight number is per boarding. They are different
denominators and we are not going to quietly paper over that: this page answers
“across a whole life, how does that compare to one flight?” — not “which one kills
more people per hour?”
The same source table lists
an air or space accident kills you at 1 in 5,051 —
2,710× more likely than dying on your flight, which sounds like it
demolishes our whole argument. It doesn’t, and here is why: that row pools private planes,
helicopters, crop dusters, military jets and spaceflight. General aviation ran a fatal accident
rate of
1.049 per 100,000 flight hours in 2020. Scheduled airlines ran
0.006.
That is roughly
175 times the risk, and it is where nearly all of that row comes from.
You are not booked on a crop duster. We left the row in because deleting it is precisely the
sort of thing this site exists to not do.
NTSB → Heart disease kills you
2,740,000× more likely
Lifetime odds 1 in 5 · 652,486 US deaths a year
Cancer kills you
1,960,000× more likely
Lifetime odds 1 in 7 · 553,888 US deaths a year
A stroke kills you
571,000× more likely
Lifetime odds 1 in 24 · 150,074 US deaths a year
A hospital infection kills you
361,000× more likely
Lifetime odds 1 in 38 · 99,000 US deaths a year
The flu kills you
217,000× more likely
Lifetime odds 1 in 63 · 59,664 US deaths a year
You die in a car crash
163,000× more likely
Lifetime odds 1 in 84 · 44,757 US deaths a year
You are poisoned by accident
71,000× more likely
Lifetime odds 1 in 193 · 19,456 US deaths a year
You die from a fall
62,800× more likely
Lifetime odds 1 in 218 · 17,229 US deaths a year
You drown
12,100× more likely
Lifetime odds 1 in 1,134 · 3,306 US deaths a year
A bike ride kills you
2,790× more likely
Lifetime odds 1 in 4,919 · 762 US deaths a year
You freeze to death
2,270× more likely
Lifetime odds 1 in 6,045 · 620 US deaths a year
The sun kills you
998× more likely
Lifetime odds 1 in 13,729 · 273 US deaths a year
You're killed by lightning
172× more likely
Lifetime odds 1 in 79,746 · 47 US deaths a year
A train crash kills you
88× more likely
Lifetime odds 1 in 156,169 · 24 US deaths a year
Fireworks kill you
40× more likely
Lifetime odds 1 in 340,733 · 11 US deaths a year
A shark kills you
3× more likely
Lifetime odds 1 in 4,332,817 · 1 US deaths a year
The math, in full
Take the lightning row. Lifetime odds of being killed by lightning: 1 in 79,746.
Risk of dying on a commercial flight: 1 in 13,700,000.
Divide one by the other — 13,700,000 ÷ 79,746 — and you get 171.8, which we round to
172× more likely. Every card above is that same division. Nothing is
hand-typed; if a source number changes, the multiplier changes with it.
Past a thousand we round to three significant figures, because “163,095× more likely”
implies a precision that a lifetime actuarial table simply does not have.
Flight risk: Barnett,
Journal of Air Transport Management, Aug 2024 — 1 death per 13.7M
boardings worldwide, 2018–2022.
MIT →
Everything else: accidental deaths from the National Safety Council, disease deaths from the
CDC, shark data from the International Shark Attack File. One table, 2021 US population,
76.6-year life expectancy.
ISAF →