Frugal innovation this, the rise of the East that, beware of the Indian Tiger and the Chinese Dragon, the future is Africa now that it is no longer a “hopeless continent”........ as I sit here in (yet another) plane, there are some things that make me happy to be a dull, risk averse, steady Eddy European....notably air travel.
I read a most interesting article last week in the FT entitled “The Final Approach” which examined how safe air travel is and has become over the last few decades in different regions of the world. Despite the Air France crash (my regular carrier) in 2009 in which 216 people died, the number of fatal accidents per million flights in the Europe has decreased from 3.8 in the 1970s to 0.6 in the 2000s. Reassuring stuff especially when you consider it’s not the same the world over – air travel has actually got more dangerous in Africa (a rise from 5.3 to 6.3). Thankfully Asia’s statistics are also good – down from 4.5 to 0.9 over the last 40 years – exactly the peace of mind I need before I head off to India next Sunday!
Some other stuff which I found interesting was that something called an airline blacklist exists in Europe. This basically bans certain carriers from flying in Europe – in 2010 over 280 airlines were banned including 50 from Kazakhstan, 46 from the Philippines, 45 from Indonesia and 33 from the Democratic Republic of Congo (with all the civil war there I’m amazed they even have time to have 33 carriers!) However I thought that the best news of all was that, alongside Southwest Airlines, it is Ryanair and Easyjet that are the only airlines who have no known fatal accidents. I can now sit back and enjoy the rest of flight EZY3706 to Paris CDG Terminal 2B.....
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