Couldn't pass by without saying someting about dropping figures without proper analysis.
Comparing data to come up with a statistic is easy. Compare data to come up with a meaningful statistic very very hard work.
The risk of an accident is mainly on take-off and on landing. This leads to: The risk associated with accidents of aircraft is related to flights and not the mere number of airframes.
This rises some questions:
If it comes to this I'd like to see the figures about B vs. A on produced airframes.
Could it be that said 747 has a couple more flights than other models?
How does time span (40 years) count in this analysis? How long does A vs. B build airframes?
How do we account for the 60's and 70's where A had hardly any airframes built but some very nasty accidents happened? (The probability that it would be a B was indeed very high at that time - surely higher than being an A - and maybe about the same for an M) See link below and the ref #18 at page 13. (Huh - up to about 2000 B had about 2/3 of western built airframes worldwide?)
Interesting the analysis here:
Competition between Airbus and Boeing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia especially ref #18.
No wonder they get hit more if they fly more...
So get the figures right before misusing them statistically.
I stand corrected.