Given airplane safety statistics, you actually probably are more likely to die flying than not flying as long as you're in a plane.

> you actually probably are more likely to die flying than not flying as long as you're in a plane

You're more likely to die from natural causes on a plane than from the plane crashing.

Some quick googling:

"287 fatalities on commercial aircraft in 2019." [1]

"Deaths on board are far rarer: one for every 7.74 million passengers." [2]

4543 million passengers globally in 2019. [3]

4543 / 7.74 = 516.

516 > 287. And 2019 had relatively high deaths from crashes (down from 561 in 2018, but higher than the 59 in 2017.)

(Of course, natural cause deaths depend upon your demographic. Planes don't care who is on them when they crash.)

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelgoldstein/2020/01/02/avi...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/well/live/death-airplane-...

[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/564717/airline-industry-...

I figured as much, thanks for actually pulling in the stats to prove it.

What about the statistic of dying while flying on a Max?

I guess it depends on exactly what point we consider the state of flying to have ended during a crash. The second the plane first makes contact with the ground, or after all of the fragments stop moving?

I think it comes out in favor of flying either way, but for sure the second makes it pretty lopsided. It limits the possibilities of OnPlane && !Flying to waiting for takeoff, and since you spend more time in the air than grounded even death by natural causes in flight would overtake death while grounded.