Creamie,
If you take,as a starting point, just post WW11, and every sector operated since then, by ANA, Ansett, EWA,TAA, Qantas, MMA et al, and up to the present residual carriers, you may not be surprised that I would argue that what started out as a pragmatic approach to Australia's problem of long distances and very limited facilities, has been proved with the passage of time. And statistically valid. It certainly was not statistically based originally.
The first time I personally got involved "at the coalface", in the actual numbers, was in the early days or ETOPS/EROPS//EDTO/acronym of choice.
Remember that Qantas and Air NewZealand were into these operations in a big way, long before US or anyone in the then EU/JAA area. For the first five years or so of EROPS, something like half of all EROPS operations were conducted by QF and ANZ. In US, ALPA was bitterly opposed, largely because of the "Speed/Weight" formula used to set pilot salaries, and UK CAA and JAA, and European unions ( who had also opposed glass cockpits) were bitterly opposed. I think it was something like five or six years after the B767s went into service, before the first Airbus (A-310?) was EROPS certified, because of commercial pressure, and the 60m strangle hold was well and truly broken.
In arriving at the first QF EROPS fuel and operational policies for the B767, Boeing certainly thought the statistics were valid (but could be accused of commercial bias) CAA (or whatever is was then) agreed, as did the AIPA, -- who hired somebody whose name escapes me now, to do figures independent of Boeing etc.
Contrary to what some think, this was not all about the probability of engine failure, everything revolved around the weather, and how you handled it pre-flight and in-flight, for any number of reasons, when the forecasts turned out to be rubbish.
Along the way, a pretty deep analysis of the company historical records supported the long time policies.
I do think a 60+ years set of records, over heck knows how many sectors,millions?, is statistically valid, even if the number of aircraft in the Australia airline fleet was (and still is) miniscule, compared to US or other parts of the world.
There are lots of 380s flying into oz with planned ALTNs at the moment. That would be all of the ones not operated by QF.
Don------
So, what's your point??
Tootle pip!!