To each their own, but the 737 NG (aka the models before the Max), the 747-400 / 747-8, and the 787 all have a lower number of fatal crashes per million flights than the Airbus A320 family and the A330.
There are a ton of planes with a better flight/crash ratio.
380 A340 where build since 1991 almost exactly as much as the number of 737 Max built (376). Not one fatal accident in almost 20 years for the A340 versus 2 fatal accident in 2 years for the 737.
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.
Please don’t read this as a defense of Boeing, especially the MAX series aircraft, but from a flyer-safety standpoint the statistics show most Boeing aircraft in operation today are extremely safe.
The post-200 series 737s, not including the MAX, have some of the largest accumulated flight miles and lowest incident rates of any aircraft ever. The 777 and 747-400 also have exceptional safety records. Even the aging 757 and 767 fleets have only slightly higher rates. The 787, though relatively newer and with plenty of documented early issues has had no passenger fatalities that I’m aware of.
Edit for context (thanks /u/janice1999) there are 11,182 Airbus A320s and ~8400 Boeing 737 NG / Max so even pro rated Boeings recent planes are worse and the A320 has been out a few years longer too.
737 Maxes have flown more than a couple of million of flights, at least, since they entered service, that puts their fatal incident rate at similar levels of the A320.
The only two incidents, also, as you know, were related and both happened 5+ years ago.
There are several airliners, including models from Boeing and Airbus, that have had no fatalities. But they are low production models like the A340. It's arguably impossible to come up with a "safest" if you don't have some way to account for the fact that 20 times as many 737NGs have been produced as A340s.
That’s comparing apples to two sacks of apples, one of which is 30 years older.
The A320neo entered service in 2016 and has over 3,000 of the type in service and has zero fatal accidents involving passengers or flight crew (there have been five fatalities from two incidents involving runway incursions by ground crew). There have been no serious in-flight incidents.
The 737max was introduced in 2017 and has over 1500 in service, about half of the airbus A320 neo. It has had two fatal accidents resulting in 346 fatalities and one serious in-flight incident. The record is not great.
If you want to compare all 737 models back to the first flight of the A320 I’m pretty sure it’ll be closer, but flying is much safer than it was even with the 737max.
However I do believe that Boeing will resolve the issues. It will take time to fix the culture that resulted caused them though.
Also worth pointing out that there are 4 times as many 777s as there are A340s. Doesn’t mean A340 isn’t great, just that the odds of no accidents go up with fewer flight hours.
The popularity of A320 and 737-NG makes their safety records particularly impressive.
Actual accident rates don't appear to back that up; accident rates (per million flights) are drastically higher for both the original 737 and 737 Classic versus the 737 NG: http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm
They never had a crash on any of their newer models, A380, A350 and neo variants.
The vast majority of flights are performed in 737s and A320 variants and the crash rate is 0.09 for Airbus vs 0.24 for Boeing.
[edit]: actually excluding planes produced before the 737NG in 1984 and the 737 max, the 737 crash rate is 0.11 which is still slightly higher than Airbus.
One year ago I did a back of the enveloppe calculation and found that the Boeing 737 Max was two orders of magnitude less safe than other modern airliners. A320 and 737NG have fatal crashes to the tune of one per 10 million flights, while the 737 Max was crashing at about one per hundred thousand flights.
Flying nowadays is indeed amazingly safe. Boeing really dropped the ball on that one.
I can see it with the 737 Max planes. I have flown on one once, but generally go out of my way at significant cost to avoid them. However, the 787 Dreamliner feels like a much safer aircraft. There were initially some issues with the Dreamliner. I don't have any issues riding it.
So both companies build planes that crash, with mostly similar rates as well
The outliers in this list are the 747, the A310 and the 737MAX in ascending order
Counting absolute numbers makes no sense, in the long run any plane model will kill an infinite number of people; what matters is the rate - that is, the slope in that first graph - and the MAX8 has the steepest. As they write, "Compared to the planes involved in accidents with the most fatalities since 1966, the 737 Max 8 has had more fatalities in its first years in service than any of the other."
Your math seems a little off there, or maybe just a typo--I get slightly under 1 in 10,000--but you are correct that the 737 Max crash rate (~1 in 250000) is much worse than other contemporary airliners. In fact the only modern airliner with a worse crash rate was the Concorde.
I'm not trying to defend the 737 Max or Boeing, I'm just trying to point out that even a plane which is dramatically worse than any other active airliner is still, in absolute terms, very very safe. Our safety standards are incredibly high and we are absolutely justified in enforcing those standards, but people shouldn't be scared to fly on the 737 Max when it comes back into service.
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