One can make the case that commercial air travel has never been a bigger hassle. There are security bottlenecks, crowded planes and fewer direct flights.

On the other hand, the chance of arriving at your destination alive has never been greater if you travel on a U.S. commercial jetliner.

On July 6, 2013 Asiana Airlines Flight 361, a Boeing 777, crashed short of the runway at San Francisco International Airport, killing three of the 307 people on board. The three fatalities were the only U.S. commercial jet aviation deaths in 2013, but what’s remarkable about that is not the low number, but that there were any fatalities at all.

Previous fatal accident

In 2007 through 2012 there we no airline fatalities in the U.S. To find a fatal U.S. airline accident before that you have to go back to 2006 when 49 people died on a Comair commuter jet that took off on the wrong runway at Lexington, Ky., and crashed.

As recently as the 1980s U.S. airlines routinely suffered two or three fatal crashes each year, sometimes resulting in the loss of all on board. As recently as the early 1990s, however, the fatal accident rate began to fall.

Aircraft manufacturer Boeing compiles an annual report on airline safety. In its latest report it shows the annual fatal accident rate for North American airlines has been approximately 0.3 per million departures, meaning one fatal accident per 10 million departures. In the early 1960s the rate was one death per one million departures – 10 times higher.

Equipment and training

What’s behind the dramatic and relatively recent increase in jet airline safety in the U.S.? For answers we turned to Michael Braasch, director of the Ohio University Avionics Engineering Center. Braasch says that today a variety of factors, including better equipment in the air and on the ground – along with better training – have made air travel the safest it’s been since commercial jet service was introduced in the 1950s.

“The very first commercial jet aircraft was the de Havilland Comet,” Braasch said. “In the first half of 1954, two Comets, operated by the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) broke up in flight over the Mediterranean. An intensive investigation determined that metal fatigue was the culprit.”

Investigators soon learned that pressurized cabins for extended time at high altitude caused enough stress that the metal couldn’t stand up to it. Over the years, lessons gained from other accidents went into improved systems and safety protocols.

Wind shear

In the past, weather was a major cause of fatal accidents. In particular wind shear – a sudden change of wind direction during a thunderstorm – could cause an airliner on final approach to suddenly lose all lift and plunge to the ground. Wind shear still exists but U.S. crashes caused by the phenomenon have largely disappeared. The reason is fairly simple; planes don’t try to land when wind shear conditions exist.

“The weather radars, both on the ground and in the airplanes themselves, are excellent and the computer prediction models are too,” Braasch said. “The bottom line is that air traffic control – and the pilots — both have much better pictures of the kinds of weather that are dangerous, thunderstorms and wind-shear causing storms, in particular.”

On April 4, 1977 a Southern Airways DC-9 encountered a heavy thunderstorm over Georgia. Hail from the storm knocked out both engines, forcing the pilots to try to crash land on a two-lane highway, resulting in 72 deaths. Such an occurrence today would be highly unlikely because pilots in the skies have better information about the weather.

“We don’t fly into bad storms anymore,” Braasch said.

Avoiding disaster

Even though fatal accidents are rare there are still mishaps in the air and on the ground, some of which cause injury. On April 1, 2011 a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 was forced to make an emergency landing in Arizona after a rupture caused a hole to open in the fuselage at 37,000 feet. Two people on board suffered minor injuries.

Perhaps the most memorable recent non-fatal accident occurred January 15, 2009 when US Airways Flight 1549, an Airbus A320, ingested a flock of geese in its engines on take off from New York’s LaGuardia Airport. The plane’s captain, Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger, glided the jet to a landing on the Hudson River, evacuating the passengers and crew safely. Braasch says the “miracle on the Hudson” does say something about improved aircraft design and pilot training, but also about luck.

“The USAir flight was essentially a situation in which, after the initial geese ingestion, everything went right,” Braasch said. “The skies were completely clear, the Hudson river was not too busy, the plane was close enough to get there, and the pilot was one of USAir’s safety trainers, an expert in handling aircraft in hazardous situations.”

International air travel not as safe

Today, most fatal jet airline accidents occur outside the U.S. In 2013, for example, there were 10 additional fatal airline crashes around the world. Braasch says the safety discrepancy is primarily due to lesser quality maintenance and pilot training and not-as-capable air traffic control infrastructure. The safer skies, he says, are made possible by all the lessons learned from previous crashes.

“Every time a pilot made a fatal error, the cause was investigated and the lessons learned were passed on to current and future pilots,” he said.