Airbubba:
It is odd that some carriers seem to have hull losses every two or three years, regular as clockwork, while others go decades without losing a plane. American probably had the longest safe streak ever in number of operations from the DC-10 engine separation at ORD in 1979 to the Cali 757 crash in 1995
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Lemurian:
On the subject of un-stabilised approaches, AF recorded at the time a rate of 3.38 % on all approaches with rather stringent criteria for the definition.
It is also to be noted that the incident happened when the population of three different airlines (Air France, Air Inter and UTA) had to be integrated and that the catastrophic economical situation of the new AF wasn't the best for serene aircrews...
Lemurian, my post was in response to airbubba's musings. The unstabilized approach certainly wasn't the single cause for the Papete overrun, but maybe it would have been a non-event if procedures had been followed.
You can probably get away with not doing things by the book 99.9% of the time, but when something else does not work as it should, you may be sorry.
Looking at three more recent accidents (Gonesse, Pearson, Pau) that happened in better economic times, there was always an element of procedures not adhered to that in combination with other expected events contributed to the accident. So one might be tempted to speculate whether this is down to culture.
Also, by your argument, will United and USAir be excused from having a hull loss a year because their crews aren't the most serene due to the economic situation of their airlines?
Fortunately, there is no evidence of anything procedural in the Dorval runway excursion.