“The last time a US airline crashed was on February 12, 2009, in New York State. Fifty people died.

How far have US airlines carried passengers since February 2009? According to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, US airline customers traveled 13.3 trillion passenger miles since then. ‘Passenger miles’ are a straightforward way to account for both the number of passengers and the distance they travel. A single passenger mile represents one person traveling one mile. So, five people traveling ten miles would sum to 50 passenger miles.

13.3 trillion miles is a lot! It’s equivalent to 535 million trips around the Earth or 28 million visits to the moon and back.

It is such a long distance that it is not unreasonable to measure it in light-years. One light-year is the distance light travels over one year — 5.9 trillion miles. So, the total distance traveled without a crash equals 2.3 light-years.”

From Our World in Data.