[HN Gopher] Plane Crash Rates by Model
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Plane Crash Rates by Model
        
       Author : hosteur
       Score  : 83 points
       Date   : 2023-06-27 20:42 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.airsafe.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.airsafe.com)
        
       | whats_a_quasar wrote:
       | Cool dataset! Though I would hesitate to draw conclusions from it
       | as a passenger, since the # of events is so low. Someone would
       | need to do the statistics to see if the B737 and A320 series have
       | enough flights to be significant.
        
         | doctor_eval wrote:
         | "In 2013, the global 737 fleet had completed more than 184
         | million flights over 264 million block hours since its entry
         | into service."
         | 
         | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737
         | 
         | "The global A320 fleet had completed more than 164 million
         | flights over 303 million block hours since its entry into
         | service."
         | 
         | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A320_family
        
         | stevehawk wrote:
         | ? B737 has been flying for nearly sixty years at this point.
        
       | lovemenot wrote:
       | An interesting perspective on these numbers is to consider
       | Concorde. Though it flew several times per day on average, for a
       | couple of decades, Concorde went from 0.0 (perfect) to 11.36 in a
       | single event. By far the worst on the list.
       | 
       | I glean from this data point just how safe aircraft are in
       | general.
        
       | blutack wrote:
       | Another possible confounding factor is that these aircraft have
       | different operational profiles. The 747 variants were likely be
       | to employed on longer haul routes whereas a 737 will be doing
       | multiple individual flights per day in more crowded airspace.
       | 
       | It would be interesting to see this normalised by landing cycles
       | given that the takeoff & landing are perceived at least within
       | light aviation to be highest risk portions of a flight.
        
       | yread wrote:
       | Those are rookie numbers compared to stuff like MA60. First
       | flight in 2000, 110 built, 67 still active, 57 exported, 26 in
       | storage due to maintenance problems, 14 incidents (luckily only 1
       | fatal)
        
         | turnsout wrote:
         | Wikipedia:                 Of the 57 MA60s exported by January
         | 2016, at least 26 were in storage after safety concerns,
         | maintenance problems or performance issues; six others were
         | damaged beyond repair.
         | 
         | Not quite a glowing track record...
        
       | reso wrote:
       | That second 737MAX crash was full criminal negligence on the part
       | of Boeing. The first crash was caused by bad design, the second
       | crash was caused by Boeing's choice to do a big PR push to
       | prevent regulatory action and keep the planes in the air. The
       | families should own that company by now.
        
         | cpgxiii wrote:
         | > the second crash was caused by Boeing's choice to do a big PR
         | push to prevent regulatory action and keep the planes in the
         | air
         | 
         | You mean the intervening time in which every single operator of
         | the 737MAX was told to review emergency procedures? In which
         | every platform for aviation news was focused on the behavior of
         | MCAS and how to disable it? And in that time Ethiopian Airlines
         | grossly failed in its duty to train its crews on MCAS
         | specifically and upset/emergency recovery more generally, as
         | evidenced by the accident flight. Read the NTSB and BEA add-ons
         | to the report; I think it's clear that the crew would have been
         | hard-pressed to recover safely from an serious event.
         | 
         | I really don't want to defend Boeing here, the design of MCAS
         | was obviously grossly flawed, made significantly worse because
         | other Boeing airframes with a similar system used multiple AoA
         | sensors. _But_ given that the effects of MCAS misactivation are
         | similar to a trim runaway, which is supposed to be a memory
         | item for 737 pilots, the inescapable takeaway is that a lot of
         | pilots simply weren 't/aren't prepared to handle rare but
         | critical in-flight emergencies that builders and certification
         | authorities take for granted.
        
         | redox99 wrote:
         | > The first crash was caused by bad design
         | 
         | That's underplaying it. The design was negligent, and the whole
         | "secret" MCAS is insane.
        
         | jgerrish wrote:
         | I wouldn't want to own a company that did that. Or be forced
         | into a relationship or moved out.
         | 
         | I'm not saying Boeing is a bad company. Lots of workers have
         | put their lives into that company and believe in what they
         | build.
         | 
         | I'm just saying putting ownership into the hands of possible
         | victims seems to put more work and responsibility into their
         | laps, not less.
         | 
         | I've been in abusive situations, and hearing philosophies like
         | that worries me.
         | 
         | I understand it's one small part of what you said and the rest
         | of your comment was helpful.
        
           | addisonl wrote:
           | It's a figure of speech.
        
           | duncan-donuts wrote:
           | I think, "The families should own that company by now" is a
           | figure of speech that means Boeing should have paid the
           | families so much money that they no longer exist. I could be
           | completely wrong but that's how I interpreted it.
        
       | jeron wrote:
       | sometimes ignorance is bliss - I'd prefer not to know the crashes
       | by model and fly without thinking about the statistics
        
         | turnsout wrote:
         | They're all dramatically safer than driving to the grocery
         | store, fwiw
        
           | janalsncm wrote:
           | Are they? Just at a glance, there is about 1.35 deaths per
           | 100 million vehicle miles traveled (VMT). Assuming I live a
           | mile away from the grocery store, I will need to drive 2
           | miles round trip. That means I can be expected to be in a
           | fatal accident after around 37 million round trips.
           | 
           | The safest plane on the list is the list is the Embraer E170.
           | It has 0.03 deaths per million flights or one death every 33
           | million flights. So it's actually more dangerous. And most
           | people will be flying on Boeing 737s or Airbus A320s which
           | are about 3-20x more dangerous per flight.
           | 
           | In any case, my takeaway is that people drive _a lot_ so the
           | denominator is pretty big. And if we remove driving drunk to
           | the grocery store /driving there on NYE then driving is even
           | safer.
        
       | dangerboysteve wrote:
       | The list is completely pointless. It assumes the issue is the
       | equipment. Maybe list the operator, country, and cause of
       | incident.
        
       | jmpman wrote:
       | The Embraer 190 shows 1 incident, but when you click to read the
       | details, there were two fatal accidents. Why the discrepancy?
        
         | napsterbr wrote:
         | From the details page:
         | 
         | > This is not a numbered fatal event because the Legacy
         | aircraft, although based on the design of the ERJ135 regional
         | airliner, was not airline passenger flight.
         | 
         | This particular crash is widely known here in Brazil. The two
         | pilots from the small aircraft had turned off the plane
         | transponder. They had a mid-air collision with a 737. Everyone
         | at the 737 died.
         | 
         | The two pilots of the Embraer 190 are Americans. They were
         | sentenced to jail in Brazilian court but were never arrested to
         | this day (not sure why).
        
       | cameldrv wrote:
       | The 737MAX definitely has a bad record, but this data is somewhat
       | out of date. Very roughly speaking, The MAX has been back in
       | service for 1.5-2.5 years depending on jurisdiction. Boeing has
       | produced 1196 of them. A typical narrowbody flies about 4.5 or so
       | times per day. If you figure two years of service, that gives
       | about 2 million flights a year or about 4 million flights since
       | the ungrounding. Add that to the 0.65 million on the linked page
       | and you get 4.65 million flights.
       | 
       | That gives a fatal rate of 0.43/million flights which is pretty
       | bad, the same as the somewhat notorious ATR42/72, but nothing
       | like the number on the page.
        
         | wkat4242 wrote:
         | And the ATRs tend to operate from small airports with short
         | runways and low ILS categories (if at all!) I guess that's a
         | bit more dangerous.
         | 
         | I flew at an airport myself where ATRs operated as well,
         | nothing bigger. ILS was only a low category and only available
         | in one direction. It seems a lot tougher than landing a 737 at
         | a high-facility big airport with runways that can accommodate
         | even widebodies.
        
         | twelvechairs wrote:
         | The simple point for most people is that new design planes tend
         | to have higher numbers and older design planes (where all the
         | issues and quirks have been seen) tend to be very safe.
        
       | water9 wrote:
       | The Boeing 777 should be the safest as none of the accidents were
       | the fault of the aircraft itself
        
       | mechhacker wrote:
       | When I found out about MAX and what happened with the design,
       | after leaving that industry, I was amazed it had gotten approved.
       | 
       | That number there indicates that.
        
         | TheBigSalad wrote:
         | Wasn't the cause a software bug that was fixed and not a design
         | issue?
        
           | JumpCrisscross wrote:
           | It was a regulatory bottleneck prompting an inefficient
           | design that required a software fix to fly, which relied
           | mortally on the inputs from a sensor that was optionally non-
           | redundant outside the United States.
        
             | mechhacker wrote:
             | Yep. They were trying to compensate for different
             | feel/behavior to the pilots without additional training. I
             | really don't see how that was approved by a competent
             | agency...
             | 
             | Ended up in those two horrible crashes in perfectly good
             | airplanes.
        
               | someweirdperson wrote:
               | I think regulations refering to a competent agency
               | doesn't require any competency in the normal sense of the
               | word.
               | 
               | And perfectly good those planes were not, they had broken
               | AoA sensors.
        
               | JumpCrisscross wrote:
               | > _don 't see how that was approved by a competent
               | agency_
               | 
               | The version that flies in America has two AoA sensors. To
               | my knowledge, those planes didn't have a problem.
        
               | wkat4242 wrote:
               | Don't forget a lot of countries rely on the FAA for
               | guidance because they don't all have the resources or
               | manufacturer access to thoroughly evaluate an aircraft
               | themselves.
               | 
               | Also, even with two AoA sensors the pilot had to switch
               | to the alternate because the MCAS wouldn't know which one
               | was right. This is why usually 3 sensors are used in
               | redundant systems.
        
               | MilStdJunkie wrote:
               | Because when you're a DER (Designated Engineering
               | Representative), you're still getting your paycheck from
               | Boeing, and being a fussy DER is not a fast track to
               | success. I can't lay down too much more specifics, but
               | anecdotally, that's how things go, and not just at Boeing
               | either. Seen it at a lot of suppliers too. You're a
               | "good" DER, or you're on the short list next round of
               | layoffs[1].
               | 
               | DERs have been getting more and more sign off authority
               | on increasingly critical core airworthiness systems,
               | stuff no one would have _dreamed_ of delegating to a DER
               | twenty years ago.
               | 
               | The actual full time agency people, well, depends on how
               | much they're fishing for a corner office. But by and
               | large, they were hardasses, thank God. All three of them.
               | Particularly the EUROCAE Dutch guys. Whew!
               | 
               | But none of this is important as the Boeing culture,
               | which . . ehhhhhhyyyyuuuuuchhh . . could use some
               | improvements. To phrase it one way.
               | 
               | [1] There's always layoffs, good times and bad, because
               | everything is funded contract to contract, week to week.
               | I had a _goddamn amazing_ analog engineer get pink
               | slipped, packed his stuff, and then - after all that - he
               | got called back _before he got his boxes in the car_.
               | "Whoops! We didn't mean it! Turns out no one else in the
               | universe knows how to do this!". Luckily, he was a canny
               | old gent, and responded with a well-deserved, "Sure. I'll
               | come back in. But it's gonna cost ya".
        
               | mechhacker wrote:
               | I saw bits and pieces of this interacting with DERs when
               | I was working in the field, and you're touching on what I
               | saw first hand. Thankfully I wasn't working on anything
               | related to the MAX.
        
           | jacobn wrote:
           | My understanding was that there was a design issue that was
           | supposed to be fixed by software, and that software in turn
           | had a bug.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | axus wrote:
           | The design was not "backwards-compatible" with existing pilot
           | training, but the plan was to use software as a cheap fix.
           | They said pilots would not need new training, and were
           | betting lives on the reliability of software and humans.
        
           | rawgabbit wrote:
           | It's not a bug. Boeing deliberately chose to mislead the
           | airlines and pilots on what they were doing and used software
           | to hide the fact. On top of that there was no redundancy for
           | the single indicator which triggers the nose down/pitch down.
           | The software issues is downstream of the managerial
           | malfeasance.
        
       | Zak wrote:
       | What I'm seeing here at a glance is that newer aircraft other
       | than the 737 MAX are significantly safer than older aircraft.
        
         | someweirdperson wrote:
         | Or easier to fly / pilots better trained / airports and atc
         | having improved.
        
       | cperciva wrote:
       | Removing the "no longer in production" planes and sorting by
       | fatal crash rate per million flights:                 Embraer
       | E170/E190             0.03       Boeing 737-600/700/800/900
       | 0.07       Airbus A318/A319/A320/A321    0.09       Boeing 777
       | 0.18       Airbus A330                   0.19       Boeing 767
       | 0.28       ATR 42 and ATR 72             0.44       Boeing 737
       | MAX 7/8/9/10       3.08       Bombardier Dash 8             UNK
       | Canadair CRJ series           UNK
        
         | bratao wrote:
         | As a Brazilian, I'm happy to see the Embraer as the first. I
         | hear from pilots that Embraer planes have excellent
         | survivability and glide times.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | gffrd wrote:
           | They're also a great ride! I've been on a few Embraers, and
           | been super impressed with their "feel" as a passenger.
        
           | gtirloni wrote:
           | It's impressive, indeed. But I'd curious to know how it
           | compares to other planes of the same size.
        
         | cperciva wrote:
         | Looking at this list I'm struck by the separation between
         | narrowbody jets which generally make shorter flights (Embraer,
         | 737, A318-A321) and widebody jets which generally make longer
         | flights (A330, 767, 777).
         | 
         | The exceptions of course are 737 MAX (we all know why) and ATRs
         | (which I'm not familiar with -- anyone know why they have a
         | high fatal crash rate?)
        
           | inejge wrote:
           | ATRs had some design problems with ice accumulation[1] and
           | are in certain ways quite unforgiving, but I suspect that the
           | "problem" is their popularity with all kinds of smallish
           | outfits whose training and maintenance are sometimes lacking.
           | Case in point, this year's Nepalese crash[2], where the
           | airline is prohibited from operating in the EU, and the
           | preliminary report indicates that the plane crashed because
           | one of the pilots effectively deactivated the propellers
           | instead of adjusting the flaps while descending, causing a
           | stall.
           | 
           | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Eagle_Flight_4184
           | 
           | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeti_Airlines_Flight_691
        
           | seabass-labrax wrote:
           | > The exceptions of course are 737 MAX (we all know why) and
           | ATRs (which I'm not familiar with -- anyone know why they
           | have a high fatal crash rate?)
           | 
           | Turboprop aircraft like the ATRs are generally considered to
           | be more dangerous than jets. I couldn't find a MTBF (Mean
           | Time Between Failure) specific to the Pratt and Whitney
           | engines that the ATRs use, but an AOPA article from 2017
           | suggests that turboprops in general are over three times as
           | dangerous as jets[1].
           | 
           | Here are some potential reasons that come to mind:
           | 
           | - Turboprop aircraft typically fly at lower altitudes than
           | jets do, where there is more inclement weather and less time
           | to navigate to an airport in case of an engine failure.
           | 
           | - Turboprops are more complex as a whole than jet engines;
           | there is just more to go wrong (variable propellor pitch, for
           | instance).
           | 
           | - Smaller airlines are the main operators of turboprop
           | aircraft. I don't like to suggest that they are less
           | competent on the maintenance front, and certainly don't have
           | any evidence for this, but maybe this comes into it.
           | 
           | - Most fatal aviation accidents occur on landing, and since
           | turboprop aircraft are typically used for shorter flights,
           | they will make more landings per mile flown (nautical miles,
           | of course, in ICAO world).
           | 
           | [1]: https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-
           | news/2017/august/pil...
        
             | mannykannot wrote:
             | Another thing about the ATRs, being the only turboprops on
             | the list, is that they are more suitable for small
             | airports, and most of the airports in difficult terrain are
             | small airports. Therefore, you are more likely to see ATRs
             | flying tricky routes than the others on the list.
             | 
             | At least one crash, however (American Eagle 4184) was due
             | to a flaw in the design: ice rapidly accumulated where it
             | could not be dislodged by the de-icing system.
        
           | pengaru wrote:
           | > ATRs (which I'm not familiar with -- anyone know why they
           | have a high fatal crash rate?)
           | 
           | French-Italian collaboration, what could possibly go wrong?
        
           | notahacker wrote:
           | There's a case for adding some weighting by flight hours/km
           | as the widebody flights are on average longer, but it's less
           | clear what that should be, especially with most of the
           | accident risk being takeoff or landing. On the other hand,
           | the displayed safety record of the 747-400 is exceptionally
           | good. Much of the widebody/narrowbody distinction is just
           | statistical noise (as others have pointed out, a third of the
           | 777 accidents are a single flight being hit by a missile, and
           | another third a suspected suicide) and widebodies are less
           | common aircraft so the accident rates are noisier.
           | 
           | ATRs are turboprops that fly a lot into relatively difficult-
           | to-land small airports. Also, the accident rate under-counts
           | the amount of flights they've actually made by more than some
           | of the other aircraft.
        
             | cperciva wrote:
             | I agree that there should be some mileage weighting; but on
             | the other hand, long distance widebody flights are usually
             | piloted by more experienced crew (they're preferable and
             | flights are typically assigned by seniority).
             | 
             | It would be interesting to see statistics for maydays as
             | well; most shorthaul flights have the advantage of having
             | nearby airports for their entire route.
        
       | quickthrower2 wrote:
       | This is interesting info, especially with the MAX outlier. But
       | not enough to go on if you want to do "rainman" calculations. You
       | would need to know the operator, their country, their airline
       | safety culture etc.
       | 
       | If you can classify each crash into a % score "due to pilot
       | training issues", "due to design flaw", "due to maintenance
       | skimping". Also need to take into account time. I think if a
       | plane crashed today because of wind changing direction under a
       | thunderstorm, it is more likely to be called a pilot training
       | issue, but go back far enough and it is a weather issue instead.
       | 
       | Just based on stuff I read. I am not a pilot or expert.
        
         | TechBro8615 wrote:
         | The MAX is the one plane I will absolutely not fly on. It's
         | nice to see the numbers, but as you say, fairly unsurprising.
         | It's also nice to see that the 787 and A380 have never crashed,
         | since those are my favorite planes.
        
           | wkat4242 wrote:
           | It's not a bad plane. Every pilot now knows its flaws. Don't
           | forget one flip of a switch would have saved all those lives.
           | The problem was the pilots never knew that switch was even
           | there.
           | 
           | I'd fly on it just fine, I wouldn't feel unsafe. Though I'd
           | regret providing profits for the company that deliberately
           | let those people die.
        
             | paulryanrogers wrote:
             | Isn't it more than the MCAS itself but also the reliance on
             | one sensor (redundancy optional expense) instead of
             | standard of three?!
        
               | wkat4242 wrote:
               | Well yes both. But either way, if the pilots had known
               | MCAS existed, all they would have had to do was switch it
               | off.
               | 
               | In both cases they had plenty of time to do it.
               | 
               | Knowledge is key, even with 3 sensors it's possible 2 of
               | them fail, though much less likely.
        
               | sokoloff wrote:
               | ET302's crew _did switch it off_ [correctly]. They then
               | switched it back on in an attempt to fly the airplane out
               | of the emergency.
        
               | seabass-labrax wrote:
               | The scandal with the MCAS though was in large part
               | because Boeing went out of their way to hide the
               | existence of this system to save their customers training
               | costs, and therefore win more sales from existing 737
               | operators. On the contrary, Airbus, for instance, provide
               | detailed guidance for what to do if either one, two or
               | all three of a system like the ADIRS (Air Data Inertial
               | Reference System) were to fail during a flight, even
               | though that is extremely unlikely.
        
             | sokoloff wrote:
             | ET302's crew (the second Max crash) also knew about the
             | plane's fault mode and almost saved the craft. If they'd
             | have continued to command nose-down manually [after
             | correctly executing the runaway trim disable checklist
             | memory items and then re-enabling the power to the
             | offending system in order to command aircraft-nose-down
             | trim for a short time], they'd have almost surely flown the
             | airplane back to base.
             | 
             | It was Boeing's fault, but the crew _almost saved it_ and
             | inexplicably re-enabled the fault after correcting it. They
             | were _so close_ ...
        
         | JimtheCoder wrote:
         | "I think if a plane crashed today because of wind changing
         | direction under a thunderstorm, it is more likely to be called
         | a pilot training issue, but go back far enough and it is a
         | weather issue instead."
         | 
         | I certainly hope that a plane would not crash due to wind
         | changing direction...
        
           | devilbunny wrote:
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Air_Lines_Flight_191
        
             | JimtheCoder wrote:
             | Fair enough. A microburst on approach would technically be
             | classified as a change in wind direction.
        
           | dghlsakjg wrote:
           | "Low Level Wind Shear" is the technical name.
           | 
           | It is the ninth leading cause of landing and takeoff
           | fatalities.
           | 
           | It makes sense when you realize that airplanes can only fly
           | when the apparent wind (their speed through the air) is high
           | enough, and landing and takeoff is when you are crossing that
           | transition zone between high enough to fly, and not flying.
           | If you go from a 10 kt. headwind to 10 kt. tailwind fast
           | enough, it is exactly like losing 20 kts. of speed.
           | Especially on small prop planes, that is more than enough
           | speed difference to go from comfortable approach speed to
           | dangerously close to stall speed.
        
       | avereveard wrote:
       | I wonder how would it change by excluding chartered flights and
       | crashes
        
       | cm2187 wrote:
       | So the fatality rate across the B737 family is 0.24 per million
       | flights, the rate for the A320 family is 0.09 per million
       | flights. That's 3 times the risk of death boarding a B737 vs
       | boarding an A320.
       | 
       | If we apply the same logic than people who wanted to mandate
       | covid vaccines for the population not at risk, reducing a
       | minuscule risk by a factor of 3 to another minuscule risk is
       | hugely important and therefore people shouldn't be allowed to fly
       | on those dangerous B737!
        
         | janalsncm wrote:
         | If covid deaths were as rare and as non-communicable as
         | airplane fatalities, you would have a good point.
        
         | ClumsyPilot wrote:
         | > reducing a minuscule risk
         | 
         | Official stats say COVID killed a million people in US alone
         | and 6 million globally. Thats more than Ebola, more than
         | tuberculosis.
         | 
         | War in Ukraine killed far less, is it miniscule?
         | 
         | Furthermore, we still have people getting repeat infections -
         | and full extent of damage is unknown, but its not pretty. Its
         | quite clear that covid is close to tuberculosis than it is to
         | ordinary flu
        
           | cm2187 wrote:
           | > _Official stats say COVID killed a million people in US
           | alone and 6 million globally_
           | 
           | with a median age of 80. I am talking about the population
           | not at risk (i.e. young, no serious medical condition).
        
         | kayodelycaon wrote:
         | The 737 NEO is 0.07. Earlier 737 models predate the Airbus 320
         | by nearly 20 years. The equivalent Boeing planes are marginally
         | safer in context.
         | 
         | The 737 MAX has a horrible ratio because it's very new and had
         | a very serious flaw on launch which caused multiple crashes.
         | Whether or not it's equivalently safe now is yet to be proven.
        
           | cm2187 wrote:
           | The point is that even the 737 max number is minuscule and
           | not worth worrying if you are only flying a few times a year.
           | 
           | People are bad at understanding tiny numbers. The probability
           | of not crashing on the Max being 999,997 out of 1,000,000 I
           | think is a bit easier to process.
        
       | makestuff wrote:
       | Would it be incorrect to interpret this data that Airbus planes
       | have a safer track record? Obviously the 737 has almost twice as
       | many flights, but the crash rate is more than double.
        
         | xiphias2 wrote:
         | What matters is Boeing MAX vs everything else. It needs a few
         | years more of testing at least until we can trust that it's
         | safe.
        
           | kube-system wrote:
           | Who is we? Basically every aviation safety regulator has
           | tested and verified that the MAX fixes are sufficient and
           | have returned them to service. Even China.
        
             | nostromo wrote:
             | They also certified them prior to those fatal incidents.
        
               | kube-system wrote:
               | As it is with every commercial jet.
        
         | twbarr wrote:
         | The 737 has also been around a lot longer. The 737NG has a rate
         | of 0.07 compared to the A32x's 0.09. The A330 is 0.19 while the
         | 777 is 0.18. But even this is kind of misleading. All but three
         | of the fatalities (total fatalities, not accidents) due to the
         | 777 come down to intentional acts that would have destroyed any
         | aircraft.
        
         | rootusrootus wrote:
         | The 737 spans almost 60 years. The earlier planes had a much
         | higher rate of accidents, which skews the overall numbers given
         | that today you'd have a hard time finding one of those in the
         | sky, especially on a passenger route. The 737NG has one of the
         | best safety records of any class of plane flying today. Aside
         | from a 737 MAX, right now if you find yourself on a 737 it's
         | nearly guaranteed to be an NG, which is just about the safest
         | airplane currently in use.
        
         | kube-system wrote:
         | The 737 NG has a lower crash rate than any Airbus on the list
         | at 0.07. Hop on a 737 in the US and this is probably what
         | you'll be on.
        
           | nawgz wrote:
           | Are you trolling? Using 737 NG would be like using Airbus NEO
           | variants, which ALL were excluded from the list in the single
           | aisle category for having a 0.00 crash rate...
        
             | twbarr wrote:
             | The NG has been produced since 1997 and there are
             | essentially no pre-NG aircraft in Western service. The NEO
             | is equivalent to the MAX.
        
               | wkat4242 wrote:
               | Equivalent to the MAX perhaps except no hidden suicide
               | system on board..
        
             | kube-system wrote:
             | The NEO is a much newer plane with much less history than
             | the NG which has been around since the mid 90s. I'm sure
             | it's safe too.
             | 
             | It is fair to compare the A320 family with the NG. They are
             | comparable planes and have comparable crash stats too.
             | (0.09 vs 0.07)
        
               | nawgz wrote:
               | That's such a misleading number. The numbers you post
               | EXCLUDE both NEO and MAX crash rates, but meanwhile the
               | MAX would grossly inflate 737-NG rates and NEO flights
               | would slightly depress A320 rates
               | 
               | I highly suggest not citing those numbers
        
               | kube-system wrote:
               | The planes are grouped the way they are because they are
               | mechanically of the same generation, not because they
               | have similar names. The NEO and MAX are newer generation
               | planes than their predecessors.
        
               | laverya wrote:
               | There are 6 times more "events" listed for the 737-NG
               | variants as there are for the MAX, so there wouldn't be
               | much inflation.
               | 
               | (There's also more than 100x more flights with the NG
               | than the MAX)
        
       | TillE wrote:
       | I think there needs to be a more selective filter if this data is
       | supposed to mean anything. The evaluated incidents include
       | terrorist bombings, the deliberate Germanwings crash, etc.
        
         | notahacker wrote:
         | Think it's difficult to make much of the data even with a
         | filter. A lot of other incidents are due _mainly_ to pilot
         | error, bad weather conditions or inadequate maintenance, but
         | the aircraft don 't altogether escape blame for those types of
         | incident. Actual incidents known to be down entirely to bad
         | aircraft design are exceptionally rare amongst late generation
         | aircraft (but some of the more mysterious crashes _might be_ ).
         | 
         | The ATR figures are inflated by their flight cycles info being
         | years out of date (and based on knowledge of what ATR supplied
         | to commercial databases, likely incomplete), but you'd also
         | expect them to be higher than some of the other aircraft types
         | purely because of how they're used (flown into smaller
         | airstrips in hilly regions). At the other end of the scale, the
         | 747-400 performs excellently with only two passenger crashes,
         | but it's also had four fatal freighter crashes not counted. I
         | bet the calculated "rate" includes freighter flight cycles
         | though
         | 
         | But above all, airliner fatal crashes are exceptionally rare,
         | and some of the near misses and non-fatal incidents are more
         | indicative of design flaws
        
           | NikkiA wrote:
           | My first reaction on seeing the fokker stats was 'well, yeah,
           | it's heavily used in the Alps and Himalayas, of course it's
           | had a lot of incidents'
           | 
           | Ironically, the 727s numbers are probably skewed in the
           | opposite way to the 747 - there were loads of passenger
           | incidents with the 727, but it's been somewhat of a workhorse
           | for freight in the developing world over the last 40 years.
        
         | petesergeant wrote:
         | You said:
         | 
         | > The evaluated incidents include terrorist bombings
         | 
         | From the site:
         | 
         | > Excluded would be events where the only fatalities were to
         | crew members, hijackers, saboteurs
         | 
         | The numbers in the "Events" column are not the same numbers as
         | are on the linked Events page, if that makes sense.
        
           | 0xffff2 wrote:
           | Those statements aren't at odds are they? Terrorist events
           | that results in death of at least one passenger are included,
           | despite terrorist activity (presumably) having nothing to do
           | with specific model of airplane.
        
           | notahacker wrote:
           | It includes fatal accidents _caused by_ hijackers or
           | saboteurs, provided they manage to kill passengers and not
           | just themselves
        
             | TechBro8615 wrote:
             | I wondered about that, because isn't the hijacker
             | technically a passenger too? I wonder if their deaths are
             | excluded from the data.
        
         | voisin wrote:
         | Would those incidents be frequent enough to make anything but a
         | de minimus impact?
        
           | pcurve wrote:
           | Depending on plane, it could.
           | 
           | For example, 777 has had very few incidents, but its figure
           | is impacted by MH370 and MH17.
           | 
           | 747's number is also skewed (by about 10%) due to 3 incidents
           | involving bombing and missile shootdown.
           | 
           | By and large though, most plane crashes are due to human
           | error, mostly by pilot. Terrorism, as well as maintenance or
           | engineering defects are pretty rare.
        
           | waiwai933 wrote:
           | Probably, given how rare any fatality in commercial aviation
           | is.
        
           | twbarr wrote:
           | One of the three 777 accidents is being shot down by a
           | Russian SAM.
        
             | zerocrates wrote:
             | Another is the infamous MH370.
        
               | water9 wrote:
               | Another is the pilot error on Asiana flight in San
               | Francisco.
               | 
               | Another one is the crash at Heathrow, but that was Rolls-
               | Royce's fault
        
           | Someone1234 wrote:
           | The entire dataset is microscopic. I'd say it could make a
           | substantial impact.
        
             | bjelkeman-again wrote:
             | A really small datasets shouldn't be used for statistics.
             | But is it small, considering there are millions of flights
             | registered?
        
               | Someone1234 wrote:
               | Millions of flights, but less than ten crashes for most,
               | and it was pointing out that even some of those are
               | incorrectly categorized. When you're dividing A by B to
               | get ratio C, you cannot ignore that A is bad data because
               | B is good, it still makes for a C that is useless.
               | 
               | All this dataset provides is that with small enough
               | samples it is too noisy to draw reliable conclusions.
        
               | lolinder wrote:
               | You need a larger dataset if you're dealing with very
               | small probabilities. If you measured millions of events
               | and only saw 1 anomalous event, you have enough data to
               | say that the probability of such an anomaly is extremely
               | rare, but you don't have enough data to compare it to
               | other very rare events.
               | 
               | More concretely: if you flip an unfair coin 1 million
               | times and get a single heads, you know that the odds of
               | getting that heads are extremely low, but you can't yet
               | say what the odds are. It's _possible_ that the odds are
               | one in a million, but it 's also possible that you got
               | very lucky or very unlucky relative to the actual odds.
               | You have to have a lot of data in _both_ buckets before
               | you can distinguish.
        
           | rootusrootus wrote:
           | If I'm doing the math right, there were only 3 fatalities on
           | a 777 if you don't count MH370 or the Ukraine/Russian shoot-
           | down. That would change the FLE from 2.01 to 0.01.
        
             | henryfjordan wrote:
             | I understand not wanting to count a shoot-down but why not
             | count MH370? For all we know there was a safety issue with
             | that aircraft that caused the crash.
        
               | local_crmdgeon wrote:
               | We basically know that it was suicide at this point.
        
               | rootusrootus wrote:
               | As I recall, there's a fair amount of circumstantial
               | evidence at this point to suggest pilot suicide as the
               | most likely cause.
        
               | excitom wrote:
               | After almost a decade of investigation the preponderance
               | of evidence points to murder/suicide by the pilot. A
               | safety issue is highly unlikely.
        
               | lopkeny12ko wrote:
               | This is a very USA/western-centric perspective. No SE
               | Asia reporting is stating this.
        
               | Pigalowda wrote:
               | What do they say?
        
               | tremon wrote:
               | Isn't that because suicide is a taboo subject in many
               | countries? This was at least the case for EgyptAir Flight
               | 990 and SilkAir Flight 185, and IIRC people expressed the
               | same thing about Malaysian culture.
        
           | [deleted]
        
       | irrational wrote:
       | Why make such a useful table, but don't allow sorting by the
       | columns?
       | 
       | HTMl really needs a grid element that natively supports sorting
       | and filtering.
        
       | Waterluvian wrote:
       | If I wanted to know "what planes are safest?" But I also want to
       | correct for a bias like "Crash Airlines fields a lot of TypeX so
       | TypeX seems crashier than it probably is" how would I approach
       | normalizing that data?
        
         | konschubert wrote:
         | You could start by normalising by plane age.
        
       | bagels wrote:
       | Concorde made 90,000 flights?
        
         | bowmessage wrote:
         | Why is that surprising? There were 20 built, and were flown for
         | more than 27 years.
        
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       (page generated 2023-06-27 23:01 UTC)