NO ONE knows exactly how many people die in mid-air. The figures are likely to be under-reported, partly because patients are often certified as having died at the hospital to which they are taken, rather than on the plane.
A paper in the British Medical Journal (vol 321, p 1338) puts the death rate from illness on planes at one death per 2.4 to 7.5 billion passenger kilometres – an annual death toll of somewhere between 170 and 540. British Airways, which carried 35 million passengers in 2000, had 10 deaths in mid-air. Extrapolating this figure to all the world’s…
