A dark and windy night
Miles O’Brien is a pilot, airplane owner and freelance journalist who lives in Manhattan. His blog is located at www.milesobrien.com. The opinions expressed are his own.
A lot of travelers boarding an Airbus today might be thinking twice. After all, yet another Bus is at the bottom of yet another ocean – and another 153 souls have gone west.
Could the European airliners be latter-day versions of the DC-10? That is, a flawed design and thus a relatively dangerous way to fly?
For the entire Airbus airliner fleet (more than 5400 are in service globally), the numbers do not support that conclusion.
In July 2008, Airbus’ bitter rival Boeing released a “Statistical Summary of Commercial Jet Airplane Accidents” from the dawn of the jet age in 1959 through 2007.
At the time of the study, the A330 still had a flawless record: no fatal accidents in the course of a million departures. A month ago, Air France 447 changed that record, but the airliner remains very safe statistically.
Over the years the Airbus A300 has had three crashes that caused deaths. That equates to a rate of .47 airplanes lost per million departures. The A320 series has had eight fatal crashes – or .23 hulls per million departures. And the A340 has never had a fatal crash.
Wasn’t Flight 447 meant to be flying over the weather?
I thought thunderstorms were well below 40,000 ft. Lightning doesn’t strike upwards, or does it?
No