I first flew in the 1950s. Was it riskier then or now?

There has always been a degree of danger involved in flying, no more so than when I was a tyke flying with my parents (Mother hated air travel, Father loved going places). In 1955 when I took my first flight (“in diapers!” Mother would later lament, her experience that much more pleasant), there was a far greater chance you could die or be maimed in a crash than there is today. Mother's distaste for commercial aviation was reinforced in the summer of 1964 when an engine on our propeller-driven Constellation burst into flames, forcing an emergency landing. (Her flight back to Boston was her last.) And although Covid-19 can be a pernicious, nasty disease, I wonder if a passenger back then had a greater chance of dying than a passenger today has from contracting, and dying from, a SARS-CoV-2 infection acquired in flight.

The wrecks piled up, but still we flew

Because back in the fifties, sixties, and even later in the century, commercial aviation was an accident waiting to happen. Curiously, that didn’t stop more and more people from getting on planes, even as the wrecks became more frequent and catastrophic. 

Some of the most freakish calamities involved mid-air collisions, something you’d think the airlines would want especially to avoid, as they seem more avoidable than, say, a bird or lightning strike. But in the fifties, when I got my first “junior pilot” wings from some kind TWA stewardess, planes banged into each other with alarming regularity. The previous decade, most of these mid-air collisions involved a civilian airliner and a military aircraft. But in 1956, a United Airlines DC-7 and a TWA Super Constellation collided over the Grand Canyon, in what was then the worst disaster in commercial aviation history, killing all 128 aboard. The accident led to the Federal Aviation Act of 1958, which modernized air traffic control in the U.S., a badly needed piece of legislation, but it didn’t stop mid-air collisions. 

In the sixties, when over 8,000 died in commercial aviation accidents worldwide, there were ten mid-airs, the most notorious being the 1960 smash-up involving a TWA Lockheed Constellation and a United DC-8 over New York City, killing all 128 aboard (that number again) plus six in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood. Meanwhile, of course, mid-air wasn’t the only way airliners met their doom. They slammed into mountains, they over- or under-shot runways, they struck birds, they were hijacked, shot down by missiles or brought down by suitcase bombs or by suicidal passengers or pilots, or they simply disappeared. The famed Boeing 707 crashed 20 times during its service span, making the ill-fated Boeing 737 Max seem a paragon of reliability.  

And then flying got its act together

But gradually flying became safer: better pilot training, better planes, better technology in the cockpit and on the ground. Just 33 died worldwide in 2017. In 2018, just one person died in an aviation accident on a scheduled U.S. airline. In 2019, no U.S. airline was responsible for a fatality or even an injury. 

Feeling assured that I wouldn’t die in a crash, I flew again just a few weeks ago, from my home in Los Angeles to my home in New York, for medical reasons mostly, but partly because I missed my New York friends (one texted “You’re crazy! Stay home!”) and partly because I felt bad for the airlines, suffering their worst economic crisis ever. They missed me. And I missed them. 

I wasn’t the only one taking to the skies that day: over 750,000 others passed through T.S.A. checkpoints, although far fewer than the average 2.5 million. I’m not sure where the others were, though: the American Airlines terminals at LAX and J.F.K. were almost empty, familiar yet surreal. At 2 p.m., the departure board at Kennedy showed exactly three American flights leaving for the rest of the day. It made me sad.

I didn’t catch the new coronavirus, as testing showed on my return. I wore my mask as did everyone else, and the cabin air was refreshed every few minutes, passed through those HEPA filters the airlines love to talk about now, “with efficiency of up to 99.97%,” boasts United, “cleaner than you experience even in hospitals!” Perhaps they could have chosen a more reassuring comparison.

While it’s likely that many people infected with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus have flown this year, there haven’t yet been any headline-grabbing reports of in-flight transmission clusters, as there have been with other instances where a lot of people have met in a confined space. A passenger on a Vietnam Airlines flight in March later tested positive for the virus, as did a man sitting near her. However, there was no evidence that they passed the virus between them or, as testing and tracing revealed, that they infected anyone else on the flight. (And this was before most airlines required face coverings.) Maybe it’s those HEPA filters.

Even without documented cases of passenger-to-passenger or crew-to passenger transmission, there’s no question that the conditions of modern air travel—confined space, recirculated air, people sitting well within the recommended six feet of separation—give epidemiologists heartburn. 

And could give anyone a reason to hesitate before making a reservation. Viruses can and will travel on a plane. Everyone who flies or who knows someone who flies has heard of or experienced a cold coming on a few days after a long, full flight. That’s a coronavirus too. 

So is it safe to fly? Can we make it safer? 

But if you must fly during the pandemic, might some airlines be a better bet than others? Are there steps we can take to make flying safer now?

Start with the airline. Delta (kudos!) has banned over 120 passengers who decided, Nah, masks just weren’t for them (they aren’t just for them, of course; they’re meant to protect other passengers from them). All airlines now require face coverings, which are highly effective, as we all know by now, in limiting how far a virus can travel beyond the wearer. So wear them. (I’d like to see aviation authorities, like the F.A.A., and airport management mandate face coverings rather than leaving it up to the airlines.) Qatar Airways even hands out plastic face shields for all passengers and crew and requires connecting passengers (and most are) to undergo temperature checks. Etihad Airways requires a negative coronavirus test no more than 96 hours before flight time. Delta, Southwest, Alaska, and JetBlue have committed to keeping middle seats empty, and while this isn’t a cure-all (it probably does reduce transmission risk a tad), you could also fly like I did: in the first-class cabin on American Airlines’ Airbus A321T transcontinental jets, with seats arranged in a one-by-one configuration with no one sitting next to you. I emptied my airline miles piggybank to ensure maximum possible social distancing.  

Airlines could make flying even safer by not serving food or drink and prohibiting passengers from bringing any onboard, unless medically-required, at least on flights shorter than six hours (I think we can all survive that long without sustenance). That’s because if you take your mask off to put something in your mouth, and you’re infected, you’ll be shedding virus into the cabin while munching and sipping. A less radical alternative would be to stagger drink or food service, so while you have your mask off for eating, I would have mine on. On my flight, I noticed that people would forget to re-don their masks after finishing a drink or meal. 

I can’t tell you if flying is “safe.” Perhaps because I started flying at the dawn of the jet age when thousands died in airplane crashes and we flew anyway, I have a particular perspective, and I wonder if the risks we took back then are any more foolhardy than those we might take today. Perhaps we have just traded one risk for another?

Whether you fly, drive, or stay home is up to you, of course. But suppose fear of flying results in more car trips—750 times more fatal, per mile traveled than flying, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics. In that case, more travelers might die or be injured while driving than from Covid-19 acquired while flying.