The similarities between the crashes are few, just that both were MD-80s, both were budget airlines, and both had significant horrible fatalities.
Ah ... I wouldn't call Spanair a budget airline by any strech. Belonging entirely to SAS, Scandinavian Airlines group, they are the second most important airline operating in Spain, with aprox. 20% of the market of the whole country.
This is not an airline that was unsafe or budget or overworked and underpaid or undertrained employees. Not at all. And their fleet is on the average at about half its service life.
This was Spanair first accident with deadly consecuencies in 20 years of operations, since it was founded. Likewise, it was the first accident with deadly victims in the airport of Madrid in almost 25 years. Not counting this accident, 40 people have died in aviation related accidents (planes and helicopters) within the whole Spain in the past 10 years.
It seems the pilot, 38 years old, with 9 years of service in Spanair, upgraded to commander in 2007, had over 9.000 hours of flying experience (not sure how many on the MD-82, but 3.000 of those were in the army, as pilot on an air rescue squad SAR until 1999, where he serviced for 10 years).
The copilot, 32, though, seems like only had 1.000 hours of flying experience (again, I don't know how many on the MD-82, but potentially less than 700). He was in the list of personnel that Spanair was planning to dismiss (he would've been offered another job inside the company if he wanted as "attendant").
Spanair's financial situation, though, had deteriorated greatly in the past year or two and SAS was trying to downsize it, reduce personnel, cancel routes and even put up for sale the Spanair branch. Still, I don't think one can compare Scandinavian Airline's SAS management of Spanair to, i.e., that of argentinean LAPA a few years back.
Civil Aviation safety in Spain is not worse or better than in other european countries. According to the ECC study of safety statistics
(
EUR-Lex - 52001DC0390 - EN ):
* Airlines from Africa, Asia and South/Central America have accident rates at least twice as high as the world average, (in 1998 four times higher in the case of Africa and six times higher in China).
* North America has a rate much better than the world average.
* Western European countries, together with Australia, have the lowest accident rates.
* Eastern European countries including the CIS states, have a very high accident rate, nearly 50 times higher than in western Europe, and higher than in any other world region
Generally speaking, Spain, a typical tourist destination, is a country with relatively high air traffic, visited by airlines from many countries. In the year 2004, it was the
second most visited country by tourists in the world (according to the UN
France and Spain remain world’s top tourist destinations – UN agency= ), with about 60 million visitors annually (about same in 2006/7
http://www.unwto.org/facts/eng/pdf/b...en_excerpt.pdf )
Like the accident in Tenerife in 1977, which involved an american PanAm airplane and a dutch KLM one (
YouTube - Mayday:Catastrofe en Tenerife(5/5)Catastrofes Aereas ), deadly accidents can happen anywhere beyond the control of just about anyone, and often are a result of a number of actions in which important human errors are statistically the main cause in aprox. >60% of the cases (<30% mechanical, aprox. 10% weather/other).
In the case of Tenerife, i.e., bad weather and some radio interference made the dutch pilot take the very bad deccission to start TO without ground permission. Other signs and transmissions that would've clearly hinted he wasn't in a possition to TO seems like they were ignored by this pilot, according to CVR analysis. Other factors contributed to the accident (the PanAm pilot missed his turn and the KLM decided to "over" refuel so it wouldn't have to later, which made it too heavy to TO on time). Technology has since (1977) greatly lowered the chance of interference due to transmissions simultaneously initiated.
It is my PERSONAL opinion, though, as a frequent flyer in Spain, that generally speaking, spanish pilots are from a slightly more "macho" culture than some of their european partners and I have witnessed first hand my share (many dozens) of high speed, steep attitude, last-minute-full-30-flaps landings, TO accelerations while still turning on the the runaway, and other "aggressive" piloting behaviour that seemed rooted in the industry for a long time. This has greatly eased in the past years, probably due to more automated planes like the airbusses that mostly inhibits that type of flying behaviour, but some of that remains. I don't consider the behaviour generally in the country "careless or rushed" AT ALL during pre-flight, etc, just unnecessarily aggressive once on the controls, which is not good at all when some unexpected problem develops ...
Of course this is not true of ALL (or even most) of the pilots/airlines, just my SUBJECTIVE opinion when comparing statistically BY ME flights within Spain with flights from other airlines in western countries. In central and south american countries it feels just as bad or worse. Not much experience with asian, african or eastern european airlines.