Originally Posted by
SDB73
Are we now trying to say that when flying over water, you are just as likely to end up hitting the ocean whether you're in a twin or a single?
And that this statement is supported by statistics?
I'd be very interested to see these statistics. This sounds very much to me like a total (and potentially dangerous / harmful) misunderstanding of the numbers, but I'd be delighted to eat my words.
It is almost impossible to get such a statistic as you would need to know something like the hours of operation over water of the two different aircraft types .... and that piece of information doesn't exist. You then wind up making assumptions about how similar or different are the flight profiles and hours of operation of the two aircraft types.
The NTSB accident stats show that 'engine failure' in a twin causes fatal accidents at a rate that is only slightly less than a single (but many of these for a twin are at takeoff landing and most of the enroute ones are running/mismanaging of fuel).
The other 'stat' is anecdotal of how many twins go swimming around the UK vs singles, and from memory there have been a few twins in the last couple of years and a few more (but not many more) singles.