alasta: Although there have been some high profile air disasters this year it's important to look objectively at the statistics:



These figures obviously do not include the latest incident as the number of fatalities is not confirmed, however if there are no survivors then the total fatalities for 2014 would be roughly in line with the ten year average.

tardtasticx: This just gives me the absolute shivers. 
We've had so many plane crashes and incidents this year, and we all thought it couldn't really get worse. Then bang smack in the middle of the Holiday period another one goes missing. 

gzt: Aircraft is an A320-200. Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, have all started search operations.

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/massive-air-sea-search-for-missing-airasia-flight-qz8501


I assume the blue line end is where the flight lost contact.

thecatsgoolies: 
Terrible news. My feelings go out to the families.
I'm flying Qantas to Singapore Thursday but have a bit more faith in that airline.

markl:

tardtasticx: This just gives me the absolute shivers. 
We've had so many plane crashes and incidents this year, and we all thought it couldn't really get worse. Then bang smack in the middle of the Holiday period another one goes missing. 

As I said to my fiancee last night: every time an airliner goes down, it makes the news. Every time an airliner lands safely, you hear nothing. There is nothing to worry about. Statistically speaking, you're far more liklely to die in a car accident than in a plane crash. Are you going to freak out every time someone you know hops in a car? No, of course not. So calm down about air travel too.

tardtasticx: 

I'm not afraid of flying, and I never said I was. I'd love to travel more via plane if I could afford to.

But seeing news like this gives me the shivers because knowing nearly 200 people have most likely died in an instant is just terrifying. All those families and friends have lost loved ones right after Christmas. No one expected another one would happen this year since we've had such bad luck with planes going down (it's probably happened in the past but I don't remember seeing so many go down in such a short amount of time with such mystery surrounding the incidents).

markl:

tardtasticx: 

I'm not afraid of flying, and I never said I was. I'd love to travel more via plane if I could afford to.

But seeing news like this gives me the shivers because knowing nearly 200 people have most likely died in an instant is just terrifying. All those families and friends have lost loved ones right after Christmas. No one expected another one would happen this year since we've had such bad luck with planes going down (it's probably happened in the past but I don't remember seeing so many go down in such a short amount of time with such mystery surrounding the incidents).

It is sad, and it's a tradgedy. But really...to say "so many go down in such a short amount of time"... ? How many, and over what time period? This year, we've had MH370 of course, and MH17 (shot down over a warzone - not a lot of mystery there) and now this...that's three "high profile" ones in a year...not a short time really. And as for the mystery, as I said, there isn't much mystery around the cause of the "crash" of MH17 - it was hit by a missile - the crash site for the latest one hasn't even been found yet, so we can't speculate on what happened there at all but that doesn't count as mysterious really.

Regardless, my point is that we needn't worry overly about air travel just because we see news of an airliner crashing...