Originally Posted by
FlightDetent
Only as long as they come at the winning end of it. It is completely meaning less. How do these add in
- military shoot downs
- hijack crashes
- midair collisions caused by the other involved ac
- maintenance losses
As the hull losses - heaven and all hard working people sent - become a scarce occurrence, the outlier events distort any purpose it may have had. And I suggest it never did. It is a
PR stunt for the Instagram generation, oh wait..
Hull loss rates have been an industry safety benchmark for at least 50 years, and are used, tracked, and published by several aviation safety organizations as well as
every major aircraft manufacturer. "Intentional Acts" (terrorism, acts of war, pilot suicide) are routinely excluded as they are obviously not directly related to the aircraft type (I don't know how MH370 is treated since no one really knows if it was an intentional act or not).
Newer aircraft
are safer - things like TCAS, GPWS/E-GPWS, improved automatics, more reliable electronic systems, improved warning systems, better engines, etc.
have made each generation of aircraft better than the last - do you really want to dispute that simple fact? Even a quick glance at hull loss statistics tell us that the 737NG and the A320 series are amazingly safe (I doubt the small differences between the NG and the A320 series are statistically significant), while outliers like the MD-11 (and yes the MAX) make it obvious that the aircraft type has issues.
Do you think we'd all be better off flying around in 707s and DC-8s?
Or, more to the point, if you don't accept hull loss rates, what metric would you suggest be used for determining how safe various aircraft types are?