I saw a documentary a few nights ago about an Andes crash some years back involving the Fairchild 227. According to the program, 78 of them were build and 23 crashed, with more than 300 fatalities. I don’t believe any are still flying. The comment was in the nature of an aside, so there wasn’t any more detail given - just enough to make me think “deathtrap”. Probably just what the producers wanted.
But what is the true champion deathtrap airliner of modern (post WWII) times? I suppose the best measurement would be deaths per passenger mile, though I don’t know how available that number is.
I suppose I should exempt the DeHavilland Comet as the pioneer jet. I know the DC-10 got a really bad rep though I’m not certain if that is born out in accident stats.
This is recall, not certified fact. IIRC on a passenger mile basis the most dangerous jet airliner is/was the Concorde. Exactly one fatal accident, but since there were so few airplanes (7 total) and they flew so little, the effect on the fleet’s lifetime statistics from that one accident was overwhelming.
Which shows the limitations of working with statistical data and small sample sizes.
Beyond that anecdote I don’t have time to seach for better data. Maybe this evening.
The FH 227 gets a bum rap. When I was doing news, I covered the crash of one. It was purely weather-related (the plane got hit by a microburst on approach). There were no mechanical problems at all.
I suppose the champion deathtrap is one or another of the Russian Tupelov line, but it’s hard to tell how much of their problems are the fault of the plane, or the pilots.
The interviewed a former pilot of the Fairchild, who said the pilots called it the “lead sled”. The claim was that it was seriously underpowered – which might have made a difference in it’s ability to recover from a sudden downdraft.
That’s one factor of the crash the film was about - the crash of the Uruguayan rugby team that ended up eating the casualties in order to survive. They flew into the mountains in heavy overcast and when it cleared they found themselves heading into kind of a box canyon that they didn’t have the power to climb out of. OTOH, it could be that most other planes wouldn’t have the power either. I don’t think there was sufficient data to make that determination even if they had tried to do so.
I recall this being given as the reason why airlines have a gentleman’s agreement never to advertise themselves as “the safest airline”. Because they know that crashes are so rare that even the one that is statistically the safest now is only one bad crash away from going to the bottom of the list, and if they’ve been harping on the other airlines on safety when that happens, they’ll get their comeuppance then.
Looking at a few of the accident descriptions in wiki, the causes appear to be diverse. The aircraft has 10 pounds per HP at gross, and a 1500 fpm climb rate. That should work fine, but then, I’m not an engineer.
Those stats are for a later model. The plane in question was a D model, which according to the program had 1750 hp rather than 2300. Which might mean the pilot was right – that’s more than a 30% increase from one model to the next, so maybe the power issue was a real one and got addressed in the next upgrade.
But I just found this site, which lists only 12 crashes of the 227 (it does include the Andean crash) rather than more than 20 as the program claimed. But – those 12 crashes include more than 300 fatalities, which does match what the show said. All a bit confusing.
More contrary info – this site says all models of the plane had the same engine, the Rolls Royce Dart Mk 532-7. Of course some of the planes could have been re-engined by the end users… Or that model of engine could have been upgraded over time.
I looked over the list of accident causes on my above cite. It appears that they are about 50/50 (my guess) as to the cause of the crash. Half questionably related to pilot error, which doesn’t rule out design demons, and half that could be related to the aircraft itself, such as the engine failure on take off, or the electrical failure that resulted in the crash. Some of the pilot error causes were hitting something on final, descending below minimums on an approach, and flying into a mountain side. Most likely those are not A/C related.
Warning: that site produced two popups on FireFox on the Mac, one of which has the insulting “do you really want to close this window” alert when I went to close it. Site not recommended!
A lot has changed since 2004. The 777 so far has zero fatalities, and only one hull-loss. And it’s in the air a lot.
Of course, until the first fatality-causing incident happens, the statistic is pretty worthless. But either way, that’s an impressive safety record for the 777.
The Boeing 377 might be a contender, at least in terms of accidents to total aircraft built. Wiki says there were 56 built and 13 “hull-loss” accidents (where the plane is damaged beyond repair).
It would be interesting to see these accident statistics in terms of accidents/deaths per passenger-mile (or km). That should adjust for the number of the planes, how frequently they are flown, and how long they have been flying.
Out of curiosity, does that include design derivatives/variants? I know the MD-11 is very closely related to the DC-10, and there is an entire family of aircraft that the MD-80 is part of (going back to the DC-9 and forward to the Boeing 717, spanning three different aircraft companies thanks to various mergers)