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  Introduction

  Direct and pithy, this quote captures the need to ensure the possible maximum safety while flying in the skies. In this increasingly globalized world where humans are becoming more interconnected, prioritizing aviation safety has been at the forefront for so many developed and developing countries whose citizens depend on air travel to go from one place to another in a matter of hours! 

  In our project, we argue that despite not being as economically developed as their more developed East Asian neighbors or Western counterparts, developing countries’ airlines in Southeast Asia and South America are just as safe and secure for traveling.

  The data for this project comes from the Aviation Safety Network’s database, which includes the number of incidents, fatal accidents, and fatalities among the 56 most renowned airlines in two time periods: 1985 to 1999 and 2000 to 2014. For our project, it was important to focus on the number of airline incidents rather than the number of fatal accidents, which allows us to assess whether an airline’s overall safety has been improving relative to their economic status and growth. To further narrow down our focus, we focused on contrasting developing countries in South America and Southeast Asia and developed countries in East Asia. These regions have witnessed considerable economic growth and reductions in airline incidents over the corresponding time period our data covers. Focusing on them helps strengthen the narrative that airlines from developing countries do not necessarily translate to higher incident rates and that a higher GDP does not have a correlation with a reduction in incidents.

Significance

This project on airline safety is important because millions of people every day choose flying as their mode of transportation. It dispels the harmful notion that an airline should immediately be shunned or deemed unsafe just by virtue of the airline’s economic status. 

The responsibility of ensuring their safe departure and arrival to their destination lies in the professionals within this industry, from the crew on board to  lawmakers. Through comparative analysis, we want to determine if examining correlation  is a valid approach to gauging the degree to which an airline should be deemed “safe” or “unsafe,” which helps others understand the varying factors that help inform their decisions to fly with an airline.