Six people—including a family of tourists from Spain and the pilot—were killed on Thursday when a helicopter crashed in New York City's Hudson River, renewing copter safety concerns.Helicopter incidents often receive high-profile coverage due to the scope, and sometimes the personalities involved. Due to the often more luxurious nature of private helicopter travel, individuals who die in the crashes will draw attention.Los Angeles Lakers legend and NBA Hall of Famer Kobe Bryant was killed in a January 2020 helicopter crash (which also took the life of his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven other people).Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, a Thai billionaire and owner of English soccer team Leicester City, also died in a copter crash in 2018.In the 1978 film Superman: The Movie, Superman heroically saves Lois Lane when high winds rip a cable from the rooftop landing pad and cause a helicopter to careen off the side of the building. When he saves her, he says: "I hope this hasn't put you off of flying. Statistically speaking, it's still the safest way to travel."But what do the numbers say about helicopters, and just how dangerous is it to travel in them?Helicopter Fatalities in New York CityThe Associated Press reported that at least 38 people have died in helicopter incidents in New York City since 1977, when a rotor broke loose while one was trying to land on the Pan Am Building (now called the MetLife Building), killing five people including one on the street some two blocks away. This led to the closure of the building's landing pad.The next accident would occur in 1981, when hijackers seized a helicopter and ordered the pilot to fly to a federal jail in Manhattan as part of an unsuccessful attempt to free a prisoner who was waiting on the roof.The deadliest incident struck in 2009, when a sightseeing helicopter carrying Italian tourists collided with a private plane over the Hudson River, killing nine people. Thursday's copter crash, which claimed six lives—including those of three children—ranks as among the deadliest in New York City history.Is Flying the Safest Way to Travel? According to numbers crunched by personal injury law firm Shaw Cowart LLP, based in Austin, Texas, airplane travel is the safest form of transportation, with an average annual injury rate of just .01 per 100 million passenger miles traveled.Motorcycles and cars rate as the least-safe modes of transport, with motorcycles recording 24 times more car accidents per million miles traveled, and cars recording an average of 102 fatalities per day and over 5 million injuries annually.What the Numbers Say About HelicoptersHelicopters have a slightly higher rate of incidents and fatal accidents compared to fixed-wing planes each year.The U.S. Helicopter Safety Team in its 2023 analysis showed that incidents have declined over the past 25 years. When looking at them across five-year groupings, the 2000 to 2004 rate was around 1.44 fatal accidents per 100,000 flight hours, which had dropped to a rate of around .77 from 2018 to 2022, with the goal of achieving a rate of .55 by 2025.When analyzed by individual year, it shows that 2003 had a spike in incidents, with a rate of 1.78 per 100,000 flight hours compared to either 2002 (1.33 per 100,000 flight hours) or 2004 (1.26 per 100,000 flight hours). By 2023, the rate was down to around .61, although there had been real lulls in 2011 (.56 per 100,000 flight hours), 2015 (.52 per 100,000 flight hours) and 2016 (.54 per 100,000 flight hours).Those numbers were much higher when accounting for total accidents by year: 2002, for instance, had a rate of 9.97 accidents per 100,000 flight hours while only having a rate of 1.33 fatal accidents. That proved to be the year with the highest rate of incidents, with the last 10 years showing roughly an average of four per 100,000 flight hours.