Risky (relatively speaking) Business
I am not trying to inflame feelings here especially after the awful 744 accident recently but as a regular reader of these forums it occurred to me that Cargo flying seems to have some real risks compared with regular passenger stuff.
This recent crash is the sixth 747 in recent years to come to grief i think ( Baghram, Stanstead, Dubai, Sea of Japan, Brussels, Eastern Canada) and adding in the notorious MD11 mishaps there seems to be quite a high accident rate on widebody freighters.
I am not suggesting any common cause here , although it seems two may be related to hazardous cargo but considering the relatively small size of Cargo fleets it does seem a high accident rate. Is this something crews feel? Is cargo work is more risky than Pax? Such incidents seem to get coverage in the media in about the same proportion to the people on board, 4 vs 400 and are usually written up in a rather dismissive way as ‘ A cargo plane has crashed in XX the crew were killed ‘ and it disappears from the media agenda by the following day although I am sure the authorities investigate crashes with the same dedication.