Is flying as an airline pilot dangerous for a living?

Answer by Thomas Zerbarini:

Flying as an airline pilot is in no way dangerous for living. It's more dangerous to drive to work than it is to be at work flying if you can imagine that.

Airlines are a public transportation source dedicated to Safety in a big way.  There is so much focus and awareness in everything we do. We practically live breath and digest safety. With so many checks and balances in place via the FAA, NTSB, Public, Media, ALPA Safety, IFALPA Safety, Airline Operations Management, Fellow Employees, Pilots, and Our own personal oversight. You can begin to see why aviation has become incredibly safe.

The Airline industry oversees safety with the swiss cheese approach. Since there is so much human involvement in what we do, we know mistakes will happen. the swiss cheese approach adopts many layers of checks-and-balances so that mistakes or errors have numerous opportunities to be caught before they get out of hand or cause an accident. Of course it's never 100%, but it gets pretty darn close to 100% Safe.

As you can imagine, the best or most safe operations would be the operations that have the best team concept and safety awareness. That's true for any industry or complex environment.

Flying in an airliner is extremely safe in this day and age.

Thomas Zerbarini

Is flying as an airline pilot dangerous for a living?