Chapter 4, Problem 96P

A study was performed concerning medical emergencies on commercial airline flights (Peterson, et al., [16]). A database was constructed based on calls to a medical communications center from 5 domestic and international airlines representing approximately 10% of global passenger flight volume from January 1, 2008 to October 31, 2010. There were 11,920 in-flight medical emergencies (IFM) among 7,198,118 flights during the study period. Assume for this entire problem that there is at most 1 IFM per flight.

Suppose a flight attendant works on 2 flights per day for each of 300 days per year. What is the probability that the flight attendant will encounter at least one IFM over a 1-year period?

Hint: Use the Poisson approximation to the binomial distribution.