The Huge Airplane Crashes You Probably Don’t Hear About

One of the biggest newsmakers is a major airplane crash. On March 8, 2014, a Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew mysteriously fell from the sky (probably deep into the Indian Ocean), and there were no survivors. No evidence of its whereabouts has been found more than a year later. The story dominated the news for many weeks, and millions of dollars were spent trying to find the wreckage. Fortunately, flying on a commercial airline is still one of the safest ways to travel.

The Boeing 777-200 plane (used on the that tragic flight) carries up to 265 people and is one of the most widely used big jets. Now think about the number “265” and multiply it by 100 so that we have 26,500. It is a significant figure in a way that you probably don’t realize.

Richard Sterns is the author of The Hole in Our Gospel (a book that I highly recommend). He notes that “Every day more than 26,500 children die of mostly preventable causes — the equivalent of 100 planes filled with children crashing.”

My favorite Bible is called “The Faith In Action Study Bible.” At the end, it has a section called “The World in the 21st Century.” On the page about the water and sanitation crisis, it notes “A child dies every 15 seconds from a water-related disease. This amounts to nearly 6,000 deaths, or the equivalent of 20 jumbo jets crashing every day” (statistics from the World Health Organization, 2004).

My guess is that most of the children in the most impoverished parts of the world have never seen a large plane — much less than ride on it. However, they and their families have to deal with clean water and sanitation issues on a daily basis that I don’t have to deal with, while I can look above and see jet planes flying over me every day on their way to or from a nearby major airport.

I suggest that you think about some of these issues the next time you see a large airplane or get ready to travel on one. Hopefully some of the material on my website will give you ideas about what you can do to help. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.