Although horrific plane crashes continue to make the headlines and the media seems to agitate the public by suggesting otherwise, traveling by air remains the safest form of transportation. Period. According to data compiled by the Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archive, there were 265 fatalities during air travel in 2013 and 794 in 2012. Contrast this with over 33,000 deaths from motor vehicle accidents last year alone. The International Civil Aviation Organization has estimated that almost 3 billion people traveled by air in 2012. Doing the math, one quickly sees that your chance of being one of the unlucky victims (794/3,000,000,000 = 0.00003%) of an airplane crash is vanishingly small. This means you have a greater than 99.999% chance of surviving any commercial flight you step onto. I’ll take those odds!