"Jeff" wrote in message
...

As you can see, the fatality number has been decreasing, but is
still only a bit lower than recreational boating, which has come
down from about 800 a year to 676 in 2004. Although you could
claim a better "passenger mile" rate for flying, the number of
hours is only 24 million. Given that there are 12 million
registered boats (and how many unregistered canoes, etc?) I
think we can speculate that flying small planes is significantly
more dangerous than traveling by small boat, when measured by
the hour.

Excellent references Jeff. Many thanks.

I note we're talking 1.5 fatalities per 100,000 hours flying, and
6 or so per 100,000 boats registered. It's difficult to take the
leap between the number of boats registered to the number of hours
boats are used, but lets be heroic and assume 12 hours per boat
per year average.

Per hour that makes planes three times more likely to kill.

--
JimB
http://www.jimbaerselman.f2s.com/
for opinions comparing Greek cruising areas