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Plane crash rates by model
- makestuff 3y agoWould 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.
- kube-system 3y agoThe 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 3y agoAre 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…
- kube-system 3y agoThe 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 3y agoThat’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 3y agoThe 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.
- nawgz 3y agoNEO is not a new generation plane, it’s a new engine option with some engineering work to support the bigger engines but overwhelmingly similar airframe and flight characteristics. They also put sharklets on the wings by default MAX is not just a new engine option, it’s an entirely overhauled configuration and position which accordingly drastically altered flight characteristics masked by all new fly-by-wire systems and previously half-baked safety monitoring in order to prevent Boeing from needing recertification. Which speaks perfectly to the culture of safety at Airbus vs the new Boeing management approach that is the hallmark of American late stage capitalism
- laverya 3y agoThere 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)
- nawgz 3y ago1/6 the events in a vanishing amount of samples would probably imply the number to be 7/6, and given the passenger counts I imagine that’s an undercount. Therefore the crashes would look more like 0.085 for both Single Aisles in aggregate…
- twbarr 3y agoThe 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 3y agoEquivalent to the MAX perhaps except no hidden suicide system on board..
- nawgz 3y ago> The NEO is equivalent to the MAX In what way? That they both have new engines? I'm pretty sure the similarities stop there. The A320, due to higher wing position, did not require massive overhauls to get the NEO functioning - so the NEO offers overwhelming airframe similarity and flight characteristics. The MAX, on the other hand, put the engines in a new position, introduced an all new fly-by-wire system to prevent the obviously necessary reclassification of the aircraft, and then cut corners on safety despite the huge amount of re-engineering they had to do. The NEO has also been out longer, and has never had a fatal crash event... Airbus makes safer planes, I can't believe people are misinterpreting statistics this hard. "If you simply include Airbus stats from the decade before 737 NG, ignore their NEO and decide it's equivalent to the MAX despite being on the absolute opposite ends of the safety scales, and then argue it's reasonable to compare the two drastically different data sets you've constructed with unjustifiable exclusions, Boeing has better fatal crash statistics!" Pathetic.
- xiphias2 3y agoWhat 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 3y agoWho 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 3y agoThey also certified them prior to those fatal incidents.
- kube-system 3y agoAs it is with every commercial jet.
- twbarr 3y agoThe 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.
- sacnoradhq 3y agoIt depends which you are comparing. Rates are usually expressed in average per 100k hours of block time (slightly rosier than wheels up time). Classic 737's serviced and flown by major American carriers and 739's on small foreign carriers today are entirely different beasts.
- rootusrootus 3y agoThe 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.
- everybodyknows 3y agoEarly 737s had a rare, transient rudder hard-over failure mode that defied analysis for a long time. When it triggered on final result was a quick spiral-dive into the ground.
- TillE 3y agoI 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.
- voisin 3y agoWould those incidents be frequent enough to make anything but a de minimus impact?
- waiwai933 3y agoProbably, given how rare any fatality in commercial aviation is.
- twbarr 3y agoOne of the three 777 accidents is being shot down by a Russian SAM.
- zerocrates 3y agoAnother is the infamous MH370.
- Someone1234 3y agoThe entire dataset is microscopic. I'd say it could make a substantial impact.
- whats_a_quasar 3y agoCool 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.
- stevehawk 3y ago? B737 has been flying for nearly sixty years at this point.
- doctor_eval 3y ago“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 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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A320_family
- mechhacker 3y agoWhen 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 3y agoWasn't the cause a software bug that was fixed and not a design issue?
- rawgabbit 3y agoIt'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.
- JumpCrisscross 3y agoIt 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 3y agoYep. 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.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> 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.
- jeron 3y agosometimes ignorance is bliss - I'd prefer not to know the crashes by model and fly without thinking about the statistics
- turnsout 3y agoThey’re all dramatically safer than driving to the grocery store, fwiw
- janalsncm 3y agoAre 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.
- dwringer 3y agoIndeed, airplanes are (as often cited) much safer if one counts per miles travelled, but they are certainly not if counting per trip.
- turnsout 3y agoTaking a US-centric look: in 2021 there were 42,915 automotive fatalities in the US [0], and the average number of vehicle trips per household is around 1900 [1], and about 124M households in the US. [2] That works out to ~235B trips, putting the death rate at 0.182 per million trips, or roughly equivalent to the per-trip fatal crash rate of the A330. So you're right, an individual plane ride is not "dramatically safer" than the average car trip (if anything it's slightly riskier), but people take far more car trips, so the risk adds up. Many years, NTSB reports ZERO deaths from commercial air travel [3], while vehicle crashes are a leading cause of death—not quite top 10, but close. [0]: https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/early-estimate-2021-traffic-fatalities https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/early-estimate-2021-tra... [1]: https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1041-august-6-2018-households-take-fewer-vehicle-trips-2017 https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1041-augu... [2]: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/HSD410221 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/HSD410221 [3]: https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20211117.aspx https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20211117.as...
- quickthrower2 3y agoThis 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 rapidly due to a microburst 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. Edit: more clear what wind changing direction is. Not just a gentle breeze from the South moving East!
- TechBro8615 3y agoThe 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 3y agoIt'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 3y agoIsn't it more than the MCAS itself but also the reliance on one sensor (redundancy optional expense) instead of standard of three?!
- wkat4242 3y agoWell 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.
- avereveard 3y agoI wonder how would it change by excluding chartered flights and crashes
- yread 3y agoThose 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 3y agoWikipedia: 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 3y agoThat 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.
- redox99 3y ago> The first crash was caused by bad design That's underplaying it. The design was negligent, and the whole "secret" MCAS is insane.
- jgerrish 3y agoI 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.
- duncan-donuts 3y agoI 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.
- addisonl 3y agoIt’s a figure of speech.
- cpgxiii 3y ago> 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.
- dangerboysteve 3y agoThe list is completely pointless. It assumes the issue is the equipment. Maybe list the operator, country, and cause of incident.
- jmpman 3y agoThe Embraer 190 shows 1 incident, but when you click to read the details, there were two fatal accidents. Why the discrepancy?
- napsterbr 3y agoFrom 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).
- lmm 3y ago> 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). America believes that the collision was caused by a mistake by Brazilian ATC (instructing them to fly at the wrong altitude), not the pilots turning off the transponder, and that it was an accident not a crime.
- cameldrv 3y agoThe 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 3y agoAnd 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 3y agoThe 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.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- water9 3y agoThe Boeing 777 should be the safest as none of the accidents were the fault of the aircraft itself
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Zak 3y agoWhat I'm seeing here at a glance is that newer aircraft other than the 737 MAX are significantly safer than older aircraft.
- someweirdperson 3y agoOr easier to fly / pilots better trained / airports and atc having improved.
- cperciva 3y agoRemoving 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
- cperciva 3y agoLooking 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?)
- pengaru 3y ago> 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 3y agoThere'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 3y ago
- irrational 3y agoWhy 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 3y agoIf 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 3y agoYou could start by normalising by plane age.
- bagels 3y agoConcorde made 90,000 flights?
- bowmessage 3y agoWhy is that surprising? There were 20 built, and were flown for more than 27 years.
- bagels 3y agoI didn't realize there were so many, and that they were active for so many years. Incredible.
- blutack 3y agoAnother 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.
- JCharante 3y agoBut if you have a specific route in mind then it could be useful. I’m a bit sketched out when flying on a turboprop plane like an ATR 72 but feel more at ease on an A320 family plane, because they will most likely be landing at a bigger airport with better emergency facilities and to a less remote area.
- cm2187 3y agoSo 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 3y agoIf covid deaths were as rare and as non-communicable as airplane fatalities, you would have a good point.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago> 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 3y ago> 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).
- andybak 3y agoAnd still the risk of death was much higher than the risk you're comparing it to. And that's ignoring the cumulative effect of infection not to mention secondary effects on resourcing. Are you serious about this point?
- kayodelycaon 3y agoThe 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.
- lovemenot 3y agoAn 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.
- stcredzero 3y agoNot many lay people are aware of the phenomenal record of the Embraer aircraft. Credit where credit is due! For a notably long time, that number would have read zero!
- Havoc 3y agoSurprised the 747 has such a high rate. Subjectively I’d have guessed it would be one of the best cause it’s like a workhorse
- sacnoradhq 3y agoI'm curious what that the rates are for Aeroflot's Ilyushin Il-96.