@xcitation : I'm stepping back for a bit, but quickly in answer to your question - I'm well aware of "lies, damned lies and statistics", and was just trying to illustrate the point that "the good old days" weren't all that good in some respects
@ap07, I'm not interested in Airbus vs. Boeing discussions - I was simply trying to prove the adage that things have gotten safer thanks to advances made by Airbus, Boeing and *all* manufacturers. Although it's worth noting that of the six A330 hull losses, 2 were due to military action and one was due to a cargo-handling accident. Of the three that were related to flight, one was the infamous test flight, another was the Libyan A330 which so far has no technical cause and the third is AF447.
In any case these statistics are too small to make a valid comparision, mercifully.
@Phantom Driver, the Indian incident, Air Inter and Nick Warner's A330 crash were largely put down to mode confusion, which has since been rectified. Air Transat was down to a maintenance issue IIRC and Habsheim (the A320 lumberjack) is a whole other story, which largely comes down to atrocious preparation on the part of AF, followed by a sequence of bad judgement calls made by the captain. Of these, only Air Transat happened after 1994.
@SLFinAZ below : How have "'A' ... also single handedly pushed the average pilot skill level significantly lower"? I'm all ears. Glass cockpits and full-featured FMS autopilots were pioneered by the A300, but enthusiastically picked up by Boeing with the 757 and 767, and Douglas with the MD-11. "What's it doing now?" has never related to FBW, but to the FMS/FMC/autopilot (call it what you will), which were well-established for more than a decade before the A320 first flew. And as for in-flight hull-loss stats, A330 vs B777 is currently 3:1 (not 0, as you stated), but again these numbers are too small to make a statistical comparison.
Last edited by DozyWannabe; 7th Aug 2011 at 20:52.