Originally Posted by letiole
I haven't seen her in a long time, but I used to work with the flight attendant who was credited with saving some lives on the Aloha flight that lost part of its fuselage in the late '80s. (She was played by Ana-Alicia in the TV movie about it.) Anyway, after that experience she'd always said she figured whatever plane she was on was the safest in the sky because the odds of her being in a second incident or accident were just too slim. Agree with her logic or not, last I talked to her she had no fear of getting on an airplane and never did. Last I knew, and it's been a while, she wasn't paying for her Aloha flights, but she was also an employee.
Sorry to say that this is definitely flawed logic. If you ask what the probability is that someone will be involved in two incidents prior to being involved in any, it is obviously very low. If fact it is the square of the probability of being involved in one incident, since the two events are independent of each other. For example, if the chances of being in 1 incident are 1 in 1000 (I know that's very high, just an example), then the probability of being involved in two incidents is 1/1000 x 1/1000 or 1/1,000,000.
However, for the very reason that the two events would be independent, once someone has been involved in an incident, the probability that they will be involved in a second incident is exactly the same as if they hadn't been involved in the first one. In the example above, that would be 1/1000.