WASHINGTON (WXYZ) — On average, more than 800 flights take off from Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport every day.
Nationally, the Federal Aviation Administration handles about 45,000 flights a day. Annually, the agency handles about 16,405,000 flights.
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With all of those flights, airline captain and aviation expert John Dowling said the last U.S. aviation crash was in 2009.
"Up in Buffalo, New York," Dowling said. "So, it’s been a good 16 years."
Here are the most recent deadly plane crashes in the U.S., according to the Associated Press:
- Feb. 12, 2009: A Colgan airplane crashed near Buffalo, New York, killing everyone aboard the Bombardier DHC-8 propeller plane, including 45 passengers, two pilots and two flight attendants. Another person on the ground also died, bringing the total death toll to 50.
- Aug. 27, 2006: A Comair aircraft crashed when taking off in Lexington, Kentucky, after it left from the wrong runway and ran off the end. Two crew members and 47 passengers were killed.
- Nov. 12, 2001: Just after takeoff, an American Airlines flight crashed into a residential area of Belle Harbor, New York. All 260 people aboard the plane were killed.
- Sept. 11, 2001: Nearly 3,000 people were killed as 19 al-Qaida hijackers seized control of four jetliners, sending two of the planes into New York’s World Trade Center, a third into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and the fourth into a field in western Pennsylvania. It remains the deadliest terror attack in history.
Deadly plane crashes of this caliber are both tragic and rare.
"I think I heard one person say you have better odds of getting a heart attack on the day you win the Powerball," Dowling said.
In fact, the average risk of an American being in a plane crash is about 1 in 11 million.
You're about three times more likely to be killed by a shark and about 2,000 times more likely to get in a motor vehicle crash.
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"I fly all over the world and internationally, and we by far have the safest airspace system, the best controllers," Dowling said.
The exact cause of Wednesday's crash is under investigation.
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Dowling said that when the 2009 crash happened, many aviation regulation changes followed.
"It led to a lot of pilot hiring changes, experience requirements, record sharing in between various airlines," Dowling said. "2009 was a game changer in terms of sweeping regulation reform."
