Comment by foldr
5 years ago
That's certainly true, but the overall stats are all over the shop (http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm). And many of the more modern models have never had fatal crashes, making this kind of comparison impossible.
> And many of the more modern models have never had fatal crashes, making this kind of comparison impossible.
They haven’t had any fatal crashes, but also haven’t flown tens of millions or more of flights either, so I agree, kinda apples and oranges for the Airbus neo models (their “equivalent”, using that term very loosely, to the 737 Max).
The A380 is the best example though of a zero fatal crash, but hardly any flights by modern standards (I think it’s flown under a million commercial passenger flights total in history, but can’t find a conclusive source). It also had two “uncontained engine failures” causing emergency landings, but thankfully no deaths in either case.
I’d argue personally that the 777 is a very very safe plane too, despite the numbers not fully supporting it. Of the fatality incidents involving the plane, one was shot down by a missile, one mysteriously disappeared from the earth with no plausible technical failure, and the final one was a clearly incompetent flight crew missing the runway at SFO.
The A340 has had no fatal accidents and has flown plenty of hours.
Sure, it’s had no fatal accidents (but six hull losses), but few were built (377 total) and only a third are still in service.
Even assuming all of those were in service the entire 27 years since launch (they weren’t, as most weren’t built till part way into the production lifetime) and assuming they were flying 24x7 over that duration (which they weren’t), it would still be less than 10% of the flight hours of the 737NG alone. Even by wide body, four engine standards, it just wasn’t a highly flown bird.