The next flight I take will have a roughly 1 in 4,600,000 chance of crashing.
That’s according to Am I Going Down? a new iOS app that uses big data to help alleviate the fears of anxious travelers.
Apprehensive travelers enter their flight information (or potential flight information), including airline, plane type and the airports from which you’re departing and arriving. Next, the app generates a number that tells you just how likely that flight is to crash.
The $0.99 app relies on data collected by the Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives, the United States National Transportation Safety Board and the International Civil Aviation Organization for its predictions, the app’s creator, Nic Johns, told CNN. In all, Johns’ app analyzed more than 10 million routes.
The calculations take into account prior accidents that resulted in one or more passenger fatalities, since that’s the “most relevant” metric for most users, says Johns. Flights older than 10 years are not included.
In my test of the app, each potential route came back with odds well over 1 in a million. The app also quantifies these odds with a reassuring statement, such as: “You’d expect to go down if you took this flight every day for 12,502 years.”
Johns, who says he created Am I Going Down? to help his wife overcome her fear of flying, released the app in the days after the AirAsia Flight 8501 disaster. He says the timing was purely a coincidence; the app has been in the works for the last year.
Air Asia has been “temporarily removed” as a possible entry in the app, according to the App Store description — but it should reappear in a future update.
–
Source: Mashable.com