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I mean, they only built 20 planes in total, so 5% suffered catastrophic failures with complete loss of life. Over the life of the program there were numerous 'n
by mikeyouse 11y ago
I mean, they only built 20 planes in total, so 5% suffered catastrophic failures with complete loss of life. Over the life of the program there were numerous 'near-misses' with rudders and control surfaces breaking off the plane at >Mach 1. The tire problem that brought down AF4590 wasn't an isolated incident whatsoever, there were dozens of blown tires including at least one other one that punctured a fuel tank and nearly brought down that plane. So yeah, 'ill-fated' seems fair.
- Retric 11y agoOnly 14 entered airline service, but they made it from 1976 to 2003 which is not that bad. For comparison 3% of 747's (53) have been a total hull loss. But, the Boeing 707's had 17% hull-loss occurrences and 246 major aviation occurrences out of 1,010 built (172) which is arguably a better comparison.