There have been a couple of high profile plane crashes in the last couple of weeks. First, a small Sukhoi Superjet 100 with 50 passengers crashed into a hillside in Indonesia, killing all aboard:

Then two different crashes in Africa occurred in the last day or so. Of particular interest was this one in Nigeria:

Curious about the topic, I looked into recent airplane accidents at . What I found was interesting, but not unexpected. At first glance, I could see I could easily divide up the crashes into the following categories:

  1. Helicopter/Military
  2. Private aircraft up to small corporate jets
  3. Commercial aircraft

What I found interesting here was that in the last group, only one occurred in a first world country. Whenever I hear people argue that government regulation is strangling business, this is the kind of thing that comes to mind. Our aircraft stay in the air, our buildings don’t routinely collapse, and we are rarely poisoned by our food. I’m not willing to change that to save a few dollars on the price of those things.