RSSeNEWS to be determined...

Following the failed 'crotch bomber' attack on 25 December, statistician Nate Silver has quantified the risks from terrorism faced by air travellers arriving in or departing from the US.

He declared that "you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning."

While airport security measures have been beefed up on both sides of the Atlantic and President Obama has lambasted US agencies, the political pollster issued his own assessment of the terrorist risk based upon data published by the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

The BTS figures covered the decade ending September 2009, during which six incidents were recorded - including the four on 11 September 2001.

Taking account of both domestic flights within the US and international flights, Silver found there was one terrorist incident for every 16,553,385 departures. This equated to one terrorist incident per 27,221,877 hours, or 3,105 years, airborne.

Further, Silver calculated that the odds of being on a departure subject to a terrorist incident "have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade". He contrasted this with the odds of being struck by lightning; about 1 in 500,000 in a given year.