In the wee small hours of this morning (AEST), Fri 18 July 2014, a Malaysian Airlines plane flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, with 298 souls on board, was shot down over eastern Ukraine. There is an enormous amount of finger pointing, much of it at pro-Russian separatists who reportedly mistook the flight for a Ukrainian cargo plane. There are also questions being asked about why the flight path took MH17 over Ukraine (by far the most direct route). Which is a little bit like asking why the girl who got raped was in that part of town in the first place: really not the point.
My deepest sympathies go out to those who have lost loved ones. There's one poor family who lost family members to both the MH370 (which disappeared en route from KL to Beijing in March) and MH17 disasters. I cannot begin to imagine how they are coping.
But it won't stop us flying to, and around, Europe in a couple of months.
Air travel remains the safest way to get anywhere on a distance-travelled basis. It ranks roughly second-equal safest (with rail) on a fatalities per billion hours travelled (around 30). It drops down the rankings on a per-journey basis (117 fatalities per billion journeys), but is still incredibly low risk. (Figures from here, based on pre 9/11 data.) (Main take-away from that report: whichever way you look at it, motorcycles are a magnitude worse than the second worst, no matter which way you count it.)
Let's look at it another way. Of the 25 most likely ways you'll die, heart disease, cancer and stroke take out the top three places (leaving aside Chuck Norris). Car accidents come in at number five (1 in 100), bicycle accidents at number 11 (1 in 5717), and air travel at number 14 (1 in 20,000).
From a more fatalistic perspective, all four of us are travelling together. If one of us were to die in a plane crash, there's a bloody good chance all of us will. None of us would have to go on without the others. The boys wouldn't be left orphaned, and I wouldn't have endure without any of the three people I love most. It'll be a pain in the arse (and heart) for everyone else, but not for us 'cos we'll all be dead!
That's not to say that it's not a good time to make sure the paperwork is all sorted. I've already organised comprehensive travel insurance, and will have electronic copies of all relevant documents (passports, birth certificates, etc) with us and others. We will also confirm that our executrices (two of our sisters) know where the wills and other important documents are, that we want our Facebook accounts deleted (not memorialised, thank you!), and to please clear our internet caches before you do anything else.
Think of travel insurance like the Umbrella Principle: if you take a brolly with you, it probably won't rain, but if you don't take one, you can be pretty confident it'll pour. And I'd much rather have travel insurance and not need it, than the other way around.
My deepest sympathies go out to those who have lost loved ones. There's one poor family who lost family members to both the MH370 (which disappeared en route from KL to Beijing in March) and MH17 disasters. I cannot begin to imagine how they are coping.
But it won't stop us flying to, and around, Europe in a couple of months.
Air travel remains the safest way to get anywhere on a distance-travelled basis. It ranks roughly second-equal safest (with rail) on a fatalities per billion hours travelled (around 30). It drops down the rankings on a per-journey basis (117 fatalities per billion journeys), but is still incredibly low risk. (Figures from here, based on pre 9/11 data.) (Main take-away from that report: whichever way you look at it, motorcycles are a magnitude worse than the second worst, no matter which way you count it.)
Let's look at it another way. Of the 25 most likely ways you'll die, heart disease, cancer and stroke take out the top three places (leaving aside Chuck Norris). Car accidents come in at number five (1 in 100), bicycle accidents at number 11 (1 in 5717), and air travel at number 14 (1 in 20,000).
From a more fatalistic perspective, all four of us are travelling together. If one of us were to die in a plane crash, there's a bloody good chance all of us will. None of us would have to go on without the others. The boys wouldn't be left orphaned, and I wouldn't have endure without any of the three people I love most. It'll be a pain in the arse (and heart) for everyone else, but not for us 'cos we'll all be dead!
That's not to say that it's not a good time to make sure the paperwork is all sorted. I've already organised comprehensive travel insurance, and will have electronic copies of all relevant documents (passports, birth certificates, etc) with us and others. We will also confirm that our executrices (two of our sisters) know where the wills and other important documents are, that we want our Facebook accounts deleted (not memorialised, thank you!), and to please clear our internet caches before you do anything else.
Think of travel insurance like the Umbrella Principle: if you take a brolly with you, it probably won't rain, but if you don't take one, you can be pretty confident it'll pour. And I'd much rather have travel insurance and not need it, than the other way around.
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