I was wondering the same exact thing!!! I travel a lot for work, and always thought that... I spoke with my father about it and since he's obviously been around much longer than I've been, he said that the technology really has improved, he asked me how often I hear of planes crashing today... it happens, but realistically really not that much... but he says when he was younger, it was like EVERY week he would hear about a plan going down.
My dad's actually been on a falling plane, it was a two engine SwissAir flight, I think it was a boeing 777. And one of the engines BLEW UP.... not stopped working, not stuttered, LITERALLY BLEW UP, fire, explosion and all.... The plane lost all power and dropped for 27 seconds (really fucking long time if you are falling) it was during the time that they were serving drinks, and he said shit was falling all over the place, those carts were flipping on people, he told me that he pretty much figured he's dead.... then all of a sudden the power was back on and they heard the other engine starting and the plane stopped falling, they started flying all slanted and the captain came on the speaker and said, as you know we've lost engine #1, but don't worry these planes are meant to fly with one engine, then he explained that the only challenge will be to land. anyways, I they ended up landing safely in the nearest airport. It's funny because even with that, my dad never developed a fear of flying, he flies soooo much and at one point had over 2 million miles on his frequent flyer plan with British Airways.
But yeah, you gotta wonder why we're not seeing flying in fucking spaceships already, I want spaceships!
