Postby jwocky » Mon Sep 28, 2015 4:13 pm
Lets talk numbers:
A330 - 17 incidents plus 2 hijackings (which obviously can't count as technical problems). Those 17 incidents include 8 hull losses. There are aboutish 1250 A330 in service
A340 - There have been 5 incidents with hull loss, none with fatalities. Aboutish 380 of them are in service.
A350 - No incidents, but then there are only 5 of them in service yet
A380 - was 1 time involved in an incident, but that was an uncontained engine failure with dropping debris over Indonesia and subconsequent problems in other systems. Still not bad for almost 170 in service.
737 - 357 (including 111 hijackings) incidents and accidents on the book, but them 8675 of them have been delivered.
747 - 131 incidents and accidents (60 hull losses), including planes shot down by Russian fighter jets, hijacked and bombed out of the sky by terrorists. One incident involving a 747 is a Japanese (JAL fligh) in which the 747 had no problems, but the following A330 got in the jet wash and lost it's tail inturbulence. But then, there are 1512 747s of the various models delivered in total.
757 - 28 incidents and accidents with 8 hull losses. 11 of these incidents were hijackings. Of the remaining 17, two of the losses in a midair collision involved ATC errors because the ATC led the planes accidentally into each other. Some of the 757s involved in accidents were operated in some of the rather weird areas of the world and attributed to bad maintenance. And two more accidents involving 757s were actually crashes of little private planes taking off too short after the 757s and got hit by jet wash. 1049 757s have been delivered.
767- involved in 44 incidents and accidents. 15 hull losses. Only six of them caused fatalities and three of those were actually hijackings and one was pilot suicide. 1080 757s were delivered.
777 - The Triple-7 was involved in 14 aviation accidents including six hull losses. Three incidents were hijackings, Before MH370, the only fatality recorded in connection with a 777 was a ground worker who managed somehow to shower himself in kerosene while fueling up a 777. Then of course, came the disappearance of MH370, Air Asiana and the missile attack on MH17. A total of 1330 777s have been delivered as of September 1st.
787 - The Dreamliner has become the Nightmare liner for Boeing. Problems with the new batteries caused fires, there were fuel leaks, a beacon was unreliable as it sounds. However, there has not one case yet serious enough to cause an incident report as far as I can find (the other new kid on the block, the A380 came already in in Australia with an engine out and half a dozen systems damaged in consequence). However, 320 of them are delivered, which is significant higher a number than for the A350 yet.
So yes, that is not enough and not precise enough for a comprehensive examination, but it appears, that Airbus is hinging behind in accidents/delivered planes. In the four engine department for example:
A340: 5 hull losses /380 planes
747: 60 hull losses / 1512 planes
So at first, this looks bad for the Boeing, right? But then, 42 of the hull losses of the 747 were blamed on terrorists (for example Lockerbie), attacks by military aircraft (Korean Airline 007), ATC errors (one led a 747 in the mountainside outside of Madrid for example) and so on. So this leaves 18 real plane related hull losses. And to make it comparable, we recalculate the numbers both to per 100 units delivered and we get
1.31 planes lost/100 deliveries for the A340
1.19 planes lost/100 deliveries for the 747
however, there was no hull loss with an A380 yet because it's so new. We will see what comes in the future.
The picture is the same in the two engine field. Due to the high numbers delivered of some models and the long time they are already in service, Boeing seems to ramp up high numbers of plane losses, but when you look at the details, there are a lot of terrorist incidents counted in the FAA statistics. 111 for the 737s for example. If you subtract those, nothing can for example beat the statistics of the 777 because a lot of them are in service and all fatal incidents are either attacks, stupidity on ground that wasn't plane related or the still unsolved disappearance of MH370 and the Air Aisana crash. Not bad considering, there are 1330 delivered and every day, more then 1000 of them take off somewhere in the world. In the Airbus fleet, only the A330 can compete with that by numbers delivered and we know about some of those incidents as well (AF446 for example).
So, as far as safety records go, Boeing seems still to be way ahead. But as I said, this is not comprehensive and to do a comprehensive statistics would be a major work for which I lack the time right now.
J.
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