I generally agree with this article, but not this sentence. If you've read a lot of air crash investigations, you know that many times, people are alive when the plane stops moving, and then die horribly in the resulting fire because they are unable to get out. The FAA has relentlessly analyzed reports but also done tests with people in airplanes and simulated accidents to understand how to mitigate this risk. Similar results have been found by other aviation safety organizations in other countries.

I was flying during the time that fatalities on scheduled commercial flights were around 2500 souls a year. Now the world has five times as many commercial flights - and less than one-fifth as many fatalities.

It's an astonishingly good record. Clearly the aviation industry knows a lot more about aviation safety than I do. So when they ask me to do something like open the blinds, I do so cheerfully.