Do you honestly believe that airlines are as safe as they should be? Do you feel secure in every flight? The truth is that these questions are probably a bit hard to reply but I would like you to read the following msnbc.com article which will allow you to have a much more precise idea of how it all works and what you should definitely avoid:"
Within minutes of Continental Connection Flight 3407's fatal crash on the night of February 12, frequent fliers were e-mailing each other, cursing commuter airlines and vowing never to board smaller commercial aircraft again.
“I HATE THOSE TINY OLD RJS,” one otherwise rational business traveler I know shouted in his e-mail. “NOBODY SHOULD FLY THEM. THEY'RE NOT SAFE.”
No matter that the aircraft involved in Flight 3407's fiery end six miles from Buffalo Niagara International Airport was not an “RJ,” industry shorthand for regional jet. (It was a Q400, a twin-engine turboprop plane manufactured by Bombardier of Canada.) No matter that the 74-seat Q400 isn't particularly tiny. (At 107 feet long with a 93-foot wingspan, it is about the size of several early versions of Boeing's workhorse B737 jet and 20 feet longer than Bombardier's 50-seat regional jet.) And no matter that the Q400 isn't old. (The Q400 series didn't enter service until 2000 and the plane that crashed in Buffalo was less than a year old.)
Safe? That is most definitely in the eye of the beholder — and most business travelers eye commuter airlines with extreme trepidation. They don't like flying them. They don't like that the commuter lines wrap themselves in the colors and livery of the major airlines. And they are convinced, rightly or wrongly, that commuter carriers simply aren't as safe as the major airlines they mimic.
From a statistical point of view, flying in the United States is astonishingly safe. Between 2002 and November, 2008, the last month for which government numbers are available, about 4.4 billion people have flown 50 billion domestic miles. In that time, there have been just three fatal crashes.
Unfortunately, all three involved commuter airliners: 19 died in Charlotte, N.C., in 2003; 49 passengers died in Lexington, Ky., in 2006; and 50 people (including one on the ground) perished in Buffalo early this month. The circumstances and the aircraft were different in each case, but the fact that all three involved commuter airlines has spooked business travelers and even pilots."
