This is a very mis-quoted statement and one designed to bamboozle and befuddle the Sheeple. Planes ARE dropping out of the sky every year in their 100s. Just browse through this air crash database.

http://www.planecrashinfo.com/database.htm

The science and art of flying are by no means completely understood, nor completely controllable, nor are the risks involved managed and mitigated as much as they could be. Our old friend money plays a large part in all this.

Let's deal with this stupid statistic first. "Flying is the safest form of transport".

What this means is that per flight, per journey, there are less accidents than other forms of transport such as travelling by car or train. It might well be a true statistic, but the REAL QUESTION is,

"is this a useful or helpful or appropriate statistic for the consideration of the preservation of human life?"

I would submit the answer is No. It's entirely the wrong statistic. The reason is because the statistic deals ONLY with the volume of incidents rather than outcome of incidents.

Let me pose another statistic or metric.

The number of times a person is massively injured or killed when the engine of the vehicle or mode of transport they are using, fails.

When your car engine sputters and fails, most times you will coast to the side of the road and call a company for help. No-one will be remotely injured let alone killed.

On a train, if the engine fails, the train will come to a halt and whilst passengers will be inconvenienced, they will nevertheless be unhurt.

On a ship, if the engine fails, you sit there bobbing in the water, again unhurt and sat waiting for help.

On a plane . . . you plummet 30,000 feet in a few minutes of hellish realisation that you are about to die horribly while the pilot struggles frantically for some kind of control. In the end, you can be fairly certain that the seat in front of you is going to be rammed into your face at 500 mph!

In those minutes, the statistic of "more planes arrive safely at their destination than cars" becomes quite meaningless.

The one and only thing that counts in ANY form of transport is this:

On the assumption and acceptance that some kind of mechanical failure WILL OCCUR at some point, what measures are in place to ensure passengers are not injured or killed when it DOES happen?

As I have said, the mechanical failure of a car does not result in it hurting or killing people (it can do but most times does not). Regardless, manufacturers plan and accept that such events WILL happen and build in solutions including crumple zones, roll bars, air bags, and all manner of other safety equipment, at cost. It's not prevention planning, it is ACTUAL solutions for when things do go wrong.

On a ship, we have life jackets, life boats, tenders, life buoys, automated distress transmitters and so on. Again this is not prevention planning, they are real solutions for when something does go wrong.

On a plane, you have a seat fantastically designed but still relatively useless if the plane is diving out of control from 30,000 feet at 500mph ! There is a myriad of prevention planning in place, hoping and praying that things won't go wrong. But when they DO go wrong, there is little in the way of real solutions to protect you from a 30,0000ft fall.

Why does this crazy situation exist? Why does the air industry, unlike any other transport industry not have in place, multiple solutions to deal with mechanical failure? Why is there not one single solution to deal with the plane falling from the sky?

The answer is simply money. Greed, profit, money.

Did you know. . . . there has long since been a proven system that can be built into every plane which deploys a set of parachutes in the event of failure which results in the plane floating harmlessly to earth just like the lunar module floated back to earth on its descent?

This would seem abject common sense would it not? By all means invest in the PREVENTION of accidents, do everything to ensure one won't happen, but in the end you HAVE to accept that accidents WILL happen and thus you MUST have a solution in place for when it does. The air industry does not plug this gap. That, and that alone is the statistic that counts. That is why flying is not safe. That is why I no longer fly.

So why aren't all jet liners equipped with this parachute system?

Simply because of money.

Greed, profit, money.

For the sake of maximising their profits, airlines essentially force passengers to play Russian Roulette in a system that does all it can to prevent an accident but which, when actually faced with an accident, will likely result in you being killed or horribly injured.

Seriously?

1, 'Planes are not dropping from the sky by the 100's.
Look at your own link. It lists about 35 each year!

2, A parachute large enough to hold a fully laden Boeing 747 would need to have an area of over 22 acres! Not to mention the difficulty of deploying a 'chute at over 500mph.

3, Falling from 30000feet does no harm.

Hitting the ground is a different matter.