Being a pilot is still considered to usually be in the top five most dangerous things you can do.
There’s a reason for the checklists. Like many aviation rules, they came from someone bending metal or getting killed.
I don’t think this is true though? In either the civilian or military world?
According to stats from the US Department of Labor, commerical pilots have a fatality rate of like ~52. Which makes it about as deadly of a profession as “Healthcare Practitioner”, and about half as deadly as “retail sales worker”.
I couldn’t find any hard numbers for the military but the last combat death Wikipedia has was Capitan Patrick Olson who died after his A-10 was struck by a missile on February 27, 1991 so take that as you will.
I included all pilots in my comment. Not just commercial or military.
However, there’s this:
https://www.avweb.com/flight-safety/commercial-piloting-quite-a-risky-profession/
A little older of an article.
I don’t think you actually read your whole article. It’s disputing the bureau of labor’s statistics.
There’s two important quotes in there:
Digging further to find those 82 deaths reveals a matrix of flight instruction, sightseeing, ag flying, aeromed operations, pipeline patrol, test flying and so forth.
And
Unfortunately, what appears to have happened here is that any commercial pilot involved in an accident was listed … as a commercial pilot death. So that means the commercial pilot flying a personal trip from Ohio to Virginia was probably listed as a commercial pilot death when he crashed, as was the commercial pilot who died on a post-maintenance flight after working on his personal airplane
