Airline accident ratings
Data for 20 Years Jan 1989 - Dec 2008
The calculated parameters are quite clever. The "Accident Rate" column is zero where the airline has an average occupant death rate per flight and less than zero for better than average and greater than zero for worse than average. This takes into account the number of flights each airline makes and the number of deaths resulting.
e.g
Soutwest Airlines # 15M flights # 0 fatal events # Accident rate -4.25
British Airways # 5M flights # 0 fatal events # Accident rate -1.48
I have no idea of the truth or correctness of these figures but someone has gone to a lot of trouble anyway.
If the figures are true and correct, Air France does not seem to come out too well to me, and that is before the Atlantic crash is accounted for.
Interesting that none of Air France's competitors are using these figures in advertising. Maybe we need government mandated inclusion of this material in all airline ads, in a similar way to fuel consumption (and safety rating?) is published for cars? I guess the public could get hung up on minute differences but some way could easily be found so that minute differences were factored out of the published figures.
I will certainly think twice before getting on an AF flight now I have seen these numbers. Quite shocking.