xkoote,
thank you. I intended no offence, and I don't doubt the MD80 is a well thought-out and thoroughly engineered aircraft, not inherently more or less safe than other types.
I felt compelled to address some of your points since you made it sound like you thought the MD80 was a lot
more safe than comparable types. As to mentioning the A320 specifically: two reasons. (a) it is the type I am most familiar with, and (b) you specifically mentioned its flight control software, which has not, as such, caused a single accident, although cockpit ergonomics could be argued to have been a causal factor in some. But the same is probably true for many types.
About my person: I am Senior Reverse Engineer of a small company specialising in the causal analysis of incidents and accidents. Often we are hired to perform analyses for legal proceedings, using rigorous causal analysis methods; we have been working on microlight, as well as transport aircraft. We are associated with the research group
RVS of the university of Bielefeld, headed by Prof. Peter B. Ladkin PhD, that has developed the
Why-Because-Analysis.
Bernd