Air travel is still safe, say experts

Are you planning to fly in coming weeks? With three air crashes within a week, chances are, you must be feeling jittery. Well, fret not. If aviation experts are to be believed, the spate of bad aviation news is just a coincidence.

Are you planning to fly in coming weeks? With three air crashes within a week, chances are, you must be feeling jittery.

Well, fret not. If aviation experts are to be believed, the spate of bad aviation news is just a coincidence. Although the crashes may have come a few days apart, experts say that’s nothing more than a coincidence and that air travel remains safe.

“Air travel remains safe,” aviation and travel industry analyst at San Francisco-based Atmosphere Research Group Henry Harteveldt said.

“Unfortunately, we just had two terrible, unrelated aviation accidents occur,” Harteveldt added. “Obviously, the Malaysian plane was shot out of the sky, and the TransAsia incident was an incident where the airplane crashed in bad weather. These are two unrelated events.”

There have been 763 passengers and crew killed in plane disasters so far this year — 498 higher than the 265 people that died in 2013. The figure is 396 higher than the 10-year average to July of 376. However, according to International Air Transport Association, which represents 240 of the world’s airlines, more than three billion people flew safely on 36.4 million flights last year.

Air scare
Dutch experts download MH17 black box data
Dutch investigators said Thursday they had downloaded data from the MH17 black box flight recorder and that it had not been tampered with. “No evidence or indications of manipulation of the recorder was found,” the Dutch Safety Board said. “Recorder contained valid data of the flight,” it said.

Taiwan airline suspects bad weather caused crash
Stormy weather trailing behind a typhoon was the likely cause of a plane crash on a Taiwanese island that killed 48 people on board, the airline said Thursday. The crash came hours after Typhoon Matmo passed over Taiwan. About 200 flights had been canceled earlier in the day due to rain and high winds.

Plane lands safely in Toronto after trouble
Authorities say a WestJet plane bound for Calgary landed safely at Toronto’s Pearson Airport on an unscheduled stop due to an engine problem. Airport spokesman Scott Armstrong said Friday that WestJet Flight 585 was headed from Hamilton to Calgary.

Crash kills Pak-American attempting world record
A 17-year-old Pakistani-origin boy, attempting to set a world record for an around-the-globe flight has died in a crash over the Pacific Ocean. Haris Suleman was piloting a single-engine aircraft to try to set a world record and raise money to build schools in Pakistan.