[thanatosmin]

These numbers are from 1990-2000. Airlines have gotten much safer since then, so I believe they would now be much safer per-journey, too. https://www.airlines.org/dataset/safety-record-of-u-s-air-ca...

(The difference between per-mile and per-journey is still interesting!)

[MaxBarraclough]

As well as using extremely stale sources, the Wikipedia article fails to separate airlines from other forms of civil aviation.

US airlines have a fatal crash rate very close to zero. 'General aviation', which roughly means private light aircraft, is a very different world and has roughly 1 fatal crash per 100,000 hours flown, making it less safe than driving. Chartered flights are somewhere in the middle.

There's not much sense looking at the overall figure for aviation; the different categories really are very different.