A $0.99 iOS app, appropriately referred to as “Am I going down?”, uses big data and some heavy-handed arithmetic to calm the fears of anxious travelers by informing them of the likelihood that the plane they’re flying on will crash.
The app features a relatively simple interface that allows the user to go in and enter their (potential) flight information; this includes airline, plane type, and the departing / arriving airports.
Once all information is inputted, the app generates a number that tells the individual how likely that flight is to crash.
The information Am I Going Down? provides is not fluff — it’s actually spot on, as it’s based on data gathered by the Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives, the United States National Transportation Safety Board, and the International Civil Aviation Organization.
All told, the app has analyzed more than 10 million routes to get the user a figure on the likelihood of their being involved in a crash.
Some of the calculations taken into account include prior accidents that resulted in one or more passenger fatalities; flights older than 10 years are not included.
Adding a level of reassurance to the worried traveler is the line that concludes every calculation: “You’d expect to go down if you took this flight every day for XX,XXX years.”
Now, while the app might seem like a bit of a novelty program, Nic Johns purportedly created it to help his wife overcome her fear of flying. It was a pure coincidence, he added, that the app released days after the AirAsia Flight 8501 disaster, saying the program was actually in the works for the last year.
(For those curious, Air Asia has been “temporarily removed” as a possible entry in the app, per the Store’s description, but will reappear in a future update.)
Am I going down? is available on iOS systems only at the moment. You can download it here.
Via Mashable
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