Riskiest Part of Flight Might Now Be on Ground

"America's skies are the safest they have ever been," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told reporters this week, and the stats back him up: Deaths from accidents in US commercial aviation have plummeted over the last 15 years, with none registered at all in 2011. Aviation officials say they are now turning their attention toward somewhere potentially much deadlier than the skies for commercial aircraft: the ground, and specifically, the runway.

"We've learned how to operate planes very, very well in the air," a former member of the NTSB tells the Wall Street Journal. Now, "runway events are much more likely to pose a major hazard than in-flight problems." Runway incursions, where two planes end up on the same airstrip, are seen as the biggest danger. By reducing such ground hazards, safety officials aim to cut today's accident risk rate in half by 2025 to a level that would amount to less than one death for every 1.4 billion passengers on US flights. (More commercial aviation stories.)