Life Insurance And The Probability Of Dying In A Plane Crash
What is the probability of dying in a plane crash...while flying a pilot simulator?
That's right...an airline pilot simulator...on the ground...in a one story building?
A few weeks ago, when I was in Wichita, Kansas, I found out that is exactly what happened on October 30, 2014, when I saw the remains of a burned out building near their airport.
Almost a year ago, a pilot with several decades of flying experience under his belt started his day like any other day. He was training a Russian pilot, with the help of a translator, in a simulator located in a one story building near the airport. Everything was business as usual.
Meanwhile, the pilot of small plane who had left the airport radioed that the left engine had quit shortly after takeoff. Trying desperately to make it back to the airfield, he fell short, ripped through the building, and with full gas tanks, the plane exploded and burned the building completely. All four people inside were killed.
So what are the odds of dying like that? As a Risk Manager and a Property & Casualty Insurance Broker, I deal with "probabilities" on a daily basis. Your first thought is probably "chances of this happening are one in a million". However, after doing a little research, I found the odds of dying in a single airline flight's crash range from 1 in 4.7 million to 1 in 11 million depending on the statistician and source. So the odds of dying on the ground, while in a pilot simulator are closer to "1 in 100,000,000", or even less!
Even that TINY risk is covered in your life insurance policy, just like every other risk.
Here are the events that are more likely to happen to most of us:
