Thinking of flying? Well good news and bad news...

The good news is the number of serious air crashes is at it's lowest with only 111, the lowest since 1949 when jet travel began in earnest.
The bad news is 2014 has the highest number of fatalities in the last ten years 1.212 (so far) Although far lower than 1972's record year of 2.429.  The other bad news is that there have been far more emergency landings this year, for things like smoke in the aircraft etc.
One theory is aircraft maintenance has had to cut corners, and also aircraft now mostly carry the minimum legal amount of fuel for the journey, so any holds up and they've got a problem.