Gerchick has some soothing words for those who tense up when the plane starts to take off. According to MIT statistician Arnold Barnett, in 2009 the risk of dying on a flight was one in 23 million. (As Gerchick points out, you'd have to fly every day for the next 63,000 years before the odds would be weighted towards your flight being fatal.) Meanwhile, any given American child is more likely to be elected president than to die on a flight and is 10 times more likely to win a gold medal at the Olympics.
