ANCPER, you are right, Bangkok incident did effect Qantas for years, it happened in 1999.

http://www.jacdec.de/WP/wp-content/u...dex_small1.jpg



Pretty much. IOSA membership? That's mandatory for IATA operators. What about the results!

Lowkoon,

Well, compared to the sectors the average US airline would do I doubt 14 yrs would quite make it up.

In the US, the airlines had 3 hull losses and a fair few serious incidents in 2013.

US Airways @ PHL
Southwest @LGA
UPS @ BHX

Mercifully with only the loss of 2 lives. Nothing other than luck prevented that US Airbus from killing all on board.

Let's not get carried away. US Training is as poor as any in the developed world. By the time guys get to the Majors, however, they do have experience. Apparently that doesn't always count for a great deal.

Mcnugget
 

The fact that US airlines had 3 hull loses is irrelevant. It's the loses per million departures or whatever the departure yardstick is. The US airline industry would leave most countries for dust when it comes to the number of sectors as do most domestic carriers compared to LH, 6 sectors per a/c per day to a LH of maybe 2/3.

I'm not disputing that. It's an apples to oranges comparison.

Another way of looking at it, equally factually, is that US airlines have had a large number of hull losses in the last 30 years. Many other airlines haven't had one.

McNugget
 

I disagree and I think you're missing the point; that some airlines have had no accidents is hardly relevant. If you have some 10 a/c company that takes 60 yrs to fly what another airline with 300 a/c will do in 5, the fact that first airline may have operated 20 yrs without incident means zilch.

If you mean comparing LH to SH is apples and oranges, again, I'd disagree. The primary metric is the loses per departure yardstick. The only difference will be it'll appear to the casual observer that LH is safer, which statistically may not be the case.

I may have worded it poorly, but I do agree with your last comment.

The point I so poorly tried to make, is that there isn't any statistically accurate way to compare the last 30 years at CX, or QF to United. One can argue bogus statistical comparisons, but without the requisite data (ie one airline with an insufficient number of departures for comparison), it's not valid.

Based on this, I see no reason to claim the US airlines are safer than QF/CX, just because they have more departures to their name...

McNugget-

Maybe you should tell the EU about your conclusion, since they seem to think it IS possible to compare safety records.

After the Air Asia crash, some journalists were saying that Air Asia was one of the safest airlines in the world because they had never crashed before. But anyone who operates around this part of the world knows that they have a bit of a history of runway excursions. And to prove the point, they did it a few days later!

McNugget
 

I disagree, I'd have thought that data would be readily available. If not and your US airline of choice loses one today the departures for your comparable airline as of today would be readily known and you'd have a good idea of how many yrs (decades) it would take to fly a similar number i.e. how many yrs of accident free ops to equal.

Never mind.

It doesn't matter whether you agree with me, but the fact remains that given the timeframes covered, question, technical and safety related advances, airlines of vastly different sample sizes, weighted mains, etc., statistics can be used to argue that CX, for example, is the safest around, and vice versa.

If that's too much of a stretch to understand, then so be it.

McNugget
 

"If that's too much of a stretch to understand, then so be it."

Now don't be too harsh on yourself. :sad:

Statistics doesn't work like that: It doesn't how many consecutive heads you get flipping a coin, the chance of the next flip being heads is still 50/50.

Except that, it is only for the case when there is nothing affecting that outcome - not the case in aviation or any other human activity environment.

In other words, shifted weight in a coin (slightly less of safety culture) will be giving out higher values that indicates more than 50% chance of crashing... Every time. :\