Montreal Guy, I don't think you picked up on the metrics "per flight hour" as well as "per sortie" or "per sector" which indicate the opportunity for mishap, against which the number of successful or unsuccessful sorties/sectors are weighed.
There are other layers of granularity, of course, to include crew factors, system factors, company/supervisory factors, and maintenance factors that contribute to the stats.
Previously alluded to is the double whammy of low margin operators buying "cheaper" planes as well as "saving money" by doing less maintenance. If that coupling typically happens with products from vendor X, it would be no surprise to any of us when the mishap rates for that vendor / operator combination appear a sigma or two above the mean.
Big Pistons Foreever claimed earlier that Soviet built aircraft have an accident rate per hour of flight 15 times greater than Western built aircraft. I asked him for a source, which of course he will not provide. He has not even replied. I wonder why.
I think someone else has already addressed the transparency issues. If you don't get my point on that, consider that one can only account for or analyze accidents and incidents that are reported. From about 1940 to present, there is about a fifty year period of minimal transparency from your pet vendors.
I wonder why.
