Profile / Todd Curtis - He's 41 and former Boeing aviation-safety engineer who runs the Airsafe.com Web site.

Do you remember the first time you flew in an airplane? I remember that flight very well. It was 30 years ago. It was a short hop from Miami to Nassau in the Bahamas on an Eastern Airlines 727. I was with my family, and it was the first flight for all the kids. I was glued to the window the whole flight and was just thrilled to be flying.

What prompted you to launch an air-safety Web site? When I was studying aviation policy at MIT and when I was dealing with safety issues at Boeing, it was clear that the safety issues that concerned the aviation industry were sometimes very different from the concerns of the average passenger. My plan was a simple one: First understand the questions the average passenger has, and then answer those questions.

What's the most popular feature of Airsafe.com? The page that gets hit most consistently is one that lists the number of fatal events and the fatal-event rates for selected airlines of the world. Other pages that get a lot of attention are a page that has links to the accident and incident records of U.S. airlines, my fear-of-flying resources page, and an index of fatal events by aircraft model.

Air travel is statistically very safe, so what is it about flying that scares people? I have concluded that statistics neither scare nor comfort the average passenger. What seems to scare the people who write to me and talk to me is the fear of dying in some kind of plane crash. It's also being in a situation where the individual feels that there is no way to influence the situation. I've often had people say that car accidents don't scare them as much because they think that they can do something like jump out of the car or swerve out of harm's way at the last second.

Do engineers view risk differently than the rest of us? In the aviation-safety world, yes. Risk in an engineering and regulatory context usually consists of two elements: severity of hazard and likelihood that such a hazard would occur. When it comes to how most of the public reacts to airline accidents, the two key elements appear to be the severity of the accident and the perceived rate of occurrence, a rate that is often affected by the amount of media exposure. The engineering definition of risk is much easier to measure and evaluate, but I believe that both perspectives on risk are valid and that both should be considered when deciding how to deal with risks.

You're an expert on what happens when birds strike airplanes. Should we be worried? It is definitely a risk that should be taken seriously. There are on average more than 1,500 reported bird strikes per year for U.S. commercial aircraft. Experts say there is about a 25 percent chance that a bird strike will lead to a fatal accident involving a jet transport in the U.S. or Canada in the next 10 years.

What kind of car do you drive? Did you buy it with safety in mind? Look for me in a nondescript vehicle that is driving slightly below the speed limit. When I bought my car, price was uppermost in my mind. Once I get behind the wheel, then I put on my safety hat.

What were you doing 10 years ago? Ten years ago, I was in graduate school at MIT. I had just finished a masters program in policy analysis and was about to start business school. I was also ... becoming very familiar with aviation-safety issues. Later that year, I was performing research that would turn into my first published airline-safety research articles.

- Interviewed by Chuck Taylor