If Covid-19 Really Isn’t A Big Threat To The Average Airline Passenger But No Airline Bothers To Tell The Story, Does It Make Any Noise?
If every airline in the United States joined together in advertising that the average person has only about a 0.013% chance of getting (not dying from, just getting) Covid-19 from traveling aboard a commercial airliner in which every seat is filled, would that be enough to get you to fly again?
After all, the reverse of that number translates into a 99.987% chance that you won’t catch Covid-19 on such a flight?
Compared with a lot of other risky and not-so-risky things people do all the time, catching Covid-19 from flying on a full plane today is not very likely at all. In fact, statistically speaking, it’s only a tiny bit less likely than the average person being killed by commercial fireworks, or by a falling meteorite. And neither of those come close to qualifying as a common cause of death.
Indeed, the average person’s chances of being killed – not just involved in, but actually dying from – a car crash are much, much higher; about 1-in-103 every time you get in one. Yet few people give a second thought to getting into a vehicle to drive or ride somewhere. And it’s likely safer to fly now than doing a lot of things in public that many Americans are doing regularly once again, like shopping in food stores, eating in restaurants, going into their offices to work, and gathering in groups of 10 or more.
Yet, neither individual airlines nor their Washington lobby group, Airlines For America, are paying to advertise that message. If they’re trying to place well-argued pieces on the op-ed pages of the nation’s biggest and most influential newspapers – and there’s no evidence that they are – they’re being remarkably unsuccessful, especially for a group that can normally get an op-ed in the New York Times by calling up and telling the editor that the piece already is his or her inbox. And with only a couple of modest exceptions they’re not even getting their CEOs on the big national radio, TV and cable talk shows, when such programs perpetually are begging to host big-name corporate leaders. Perhaps most startingly, the industry is not even making the minimum expected effort, which would be to enlist a friendly third-party expert or former government officials to write an op-ed in support of carriers’ efforts to keep their planes disease free.
Instead, the leaders of most U.S. carriers seem content to let Americans’ understandable but emotionally-driven and often exaggerated fears of a serious disease go unchecked. Changing minds on such matters isn’t easy, of course. But it’s not impossible. Yet it will never happen if they don’t at least start trying.
Yes, the airlines will have to be careful and smart about what and how they communicate now with the public. Thanks to the use of mathematical formulas and their application to the statistical probabilities that few people really understand, it’s not hard to make folks look, and feel silly when it comes to what risks they fret over vs. the risks they ignore. So, any communications that come off as belittling of consumers will backfire on the carriers. But there are ways to get the message out that flying and traveling is not nearly as dangerous as most people currently “feel” that it is.
Data, used appropriately, can convince some – though not all – consumers that not every activity they’re avoiding right now like – well, the plague – actually is an activity that needs to be avoided. And in the case of Covid-19, that’s especially true if people follow the widely promulgated hygiene practices aimed at limiting the spread of Covid-19 (wearing a mask, frequent washing of hands with soap or the use of disinfectant gels, social distancing and more). Carriers also need to show sensitivity by communicating effectively that while flying is much more safe than most people now believe, for those at elevated levels of risk because of their age and/or underlying health issues it’s still a good idea not to fly - yet.
In fact, they can and should communicate that if all air travelers follow the recommended hygiene practices (and that U.S. airlines actually do as thorough a job of cleaning and disinfecting their planes as they now claim they do) there would be an even smaller chance that the average person would contract the disease on a commercial flight. At least statistically speaking.
To continue reading please follow this link to the full story at FORBES.com.