Aviation Disasters Haven’t Affected Malaysia’s Choice of Airlines

Considering the fact that one in three adults are nervous about flying, it should come with some surprise that aviation accidents don’t influence Malaysian travelers’ choice of airline, according to a new survey.

Universiti Sains Malaysia asked 201 Malaysians at international airports how they felt about flying, and had some surprising results. According to the feedback researchers received, the recent accidents have not affected native travelers’ choice or airline, nor has ticket pricing, either.

In fact, over 70% of those surveyed gave an average score of five out of seven for passenger confidence when traveling with any commercial airline.

The survey also showed that passengers were not only confident when traveling, but were confident even in spite of the recent incidents involving Flights 370 and 17. More than half (54.2%) of the respondents even went so far as to pick Malaysia Airlines as their first choice of commercial airlines.

Essentially, it seems that Malaysian travelers are more or less un-fazed by last year’s tragedies. Americans, on the other hand, could learn a thing or two from them. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that 6.5% of Americans have aviophobia. That’s 20 million people.

And why shouldn’t they? Sure, last year Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 completely and totally vanished, and pro-Russian insurgents shot Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 with a surface-to-air missile, but those were just two freak incidents. The report did also say that the global death toll from aircraft accidents last year was about 1,212, half of which were reported to have been from the Asia-Pacific region.

However, more than three million people around the world fly safely on commercial aircrafts every single day, the overwhelming majority of which go without incident. People are more likely to get die from lightning, food poisoning, or even falling out of bed than they are from a plane crash.

To put it all in perspective, only about 0.0004% of airline passengers died last year.