How many commercial aircraft incidents are there in a year?

Question

My friend is afraid of flying and thinks there are a lot of crashes. How many actual crashes are in a year, and how survivable are they?

Answer 1

There is a difference between "incidents" and "accidents"
There were 18 incidents in 2006. Look on the NTSB website for definitions.
There were 31 crashes in the US in 2006, resulting in 50 fatalities. One fatality was an engine tech that got sucked into moving parts of an engine on the ground.
the 49 others were on a CRJ100 that crashed at Lexington, KY.
You can do your own searches and find out about anything you want pertaining to aircraft crashes and incidents.

Answer 2

* in US about 0 - 15 / yr

* in the world around 20-50 / yr

* take the airline that has the history of the least number of accidents/yr, search it in the web

* when taking a flight, take the airline that can take your order of choosing to sit at the very back of the cabin, it's statistically and scientifically proven the most safest place on the aircraft if an accident happens

* how about taking the train or the bus, OR drive

[e-mail] ;)

Answer 3

http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2006/ARG0602.htm

Here's the Annuall NTSB Report for 2006. Should give all the data you need.