The Ethiopian teenager wanted to fly a plane and become a record holder

At the age of 15, the Ethiopian teenager set to become a record holder by flying a plane. Takeoff and landing are widely considered the most dangerous parts of a flight. But that’s only partially true. Let’s take a look at this chart. Boeing keeps track of fatal commercial jet accidents every year and categorizes those accidents by when they occurred during the flight. Boeing breaks down the average one-and-a-half-hour flight into eight phases. But we’ll just be looking at these five. Starting at the beginning, the takeoff, and the initial climb. This phase takes up only 2% of the entire flight but accounts for 14% of fatal accidents. Which might not seem like a lot, until we look at the cruising phase. A plane cruises for more than half of the one-and-a-half-hour trip, but only 11% of fatal accidents happen during this chunk. So that leaves the final descent and landing. They take up about 4% of the average flight, lasting twice as long as takeoff and initial climb. But a whopping 49% of fatal accidents occur in this short window, making the final descent and landing the deadliest part of an average flight. So what’s going on here? Typically on takeoff and landing, the aircraft is what we call low and slow. And when problems happen, you don’t have a lot of time to react.