And yet somehow commercial aviation, with its strong unions, ends up safer than virtually any other field of human endeavour.

More or less the only real Six Sigma safe industry humanity managed to create. And still, every incident turns everyone into safety and procedurural experts, even before the official incident reports are done.

As much as this frustrates me, it has always been like that, and always will be like that.

Any back-of-the-envelope safety comparisons between the airline industry and manned spaceflight (to include STS) ?

What would that be good for, did a shuttle accident take down an airliner and I am not aware of that?

Nuclear power is also extremely safe.

^1 At the point and time of power generation. Safety may not apply if your ground water was poisoned by a Uranium mine. If your town happens to have its cancer rates triple you probably started smoking or something. You will not be eligiblefor compensation.

And you know what? It's not because of tower control guys.