Very bad week: Airline disasters come in a cluster

Rescue personnel survey the wreckage of a TransAsia Airways turboprop plane that crashed, on Taiwan's offshore island Penghu, July 24, 2014. The leaders of rivals China and Taiwan expressed condolences on Thursday for victims of the plane that crashed during a thunderstorm the previous day killing 48 people including two French nationals. [Photo/Agencies]

On Wednesday, a TransAsia Airways plane crashed in Taiwan in stormy weather trailing a typhoon, killing 48 passengers, injuring 10 others and crew and injuring five people on the ground. On Thursday,an Air Algerie flight with 116 passengers and crew disappeared in a rainstorm over Mali en route from Burkina Faso to Algeria's capital. The plane was operated for the airline by Swiftair, a Spanish carrier.

Together, the disasters have the potential to push airline fatalities this year to over 700 - the most since 2010. And 2014 is still barely half over.

Aviation industry analyst Robert W. Mann Jr. said he doesn't expect the recent events to deter travelers from flying.

"They're all tragic, but the global air travel consumer has a very short memory, and it's highly localized to their home markets where they fly," he said.

Airline passengers interviewed by The Associated Press said they weren't overly concerned about their safety.

"It could be happening every day or never again," said Bram Holshoff, a Netherlands traveler at Berlin's Tegel Airport. "It's a bit much that it happened three times this week, but for me nothing will change."

Lam Nguyen, 52, of Tahiti, who was headed to Los Angeles from Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport, said he considers flying "a very safe mode of transportation."

"And if it has to happen, it will happen. ... It doesn't prevent me from taking planes," he said.

The shootdown of Flight 17 has raised questions about whether airlines, and the aviation authorities in their home countries, are adjusting flight routes quickly enough when unrest in troubled parts of the world threatens the safety of planes. But aviation safety consultant John Cox, a former airline pilot and accident investigator, said he sees no connection between that event and the other disasters.

"I don't know how you could respond to anything when there is not a commonality of events," he said. "We don't have a full understanding of the Taiwan accident, and certainly not on the Air Algerie plane."

Cox attributed the US Federal Aviation Administration's decision Tuesday to prohibit flights to Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv to "hypersensitivity" to the possibility of another shootdown. The FAA issued the order after a Hamas rocket exploded about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from the airport. The prohibition was lifted 36 hours later.

Aviation is "fundamentally safe and getting safer, but it can always fall prey to the mistakes or ill will of man," said former FAA chief counsel Kenneth Quinn. "We sometimes forget the magic of flight, or the fragility of life, but this week has brought home the need to appreciate this more and protect both better."