Is There An Aircraft That Has Never Crashed?

[JaredJames]

As the title states, has there ever been an aircraft, that has never crashed?

Just for clarification, I mean a TYPE/MODEL of aircraft (for example Boeing 757) not a specific aircraft. So please, no random aircraft registrations of currently operating aircraft!

Jared

 

[thomasxc]

never crashed in general, or never crashed because of some type of design/engineering problem/malfunction? your question is too general.

 

[JaredJames]

Well, let's look at it from both view points of:

1. Has there ever been an aircraft that has never crashed based on its design/engineering etc?
2. Has there ever been an aircraft that has never crashed because of pilot error?

I'll let you consider which category you wish to put weather into, I would say not to include it but as an aircraft must be designed with weather in mind I think it does play a part, but to be honest I was just curious as to whether or not there has been a type of aircraft never to experience a crash. So in other words all of the ones built are either still in service or retired.

Jared

Also, as a quick addition, I don't mean things like running out of fuel, although this can be pilot error, it is generally the ground teams job to check quantities input are correct as well.

 

[thomasxc]

just curious, but what would be the significance of a plane that never crashed because of a pilot? that would be the pilot's skill, not the plane's design/engineering.

 

[russ_watters]

Well, the A380 hasn't, but it's new...

For your #2, the Concorde only crashed once and it wasn't pilot error.

 

[JaredJames]

Well the majority of air crash incidents are down to pilot error, but also the design can affect things such as control ability in a critical emergency, how an aircraft copes with extremem G-force when under high stress situations (stall recovery etc.) so let me re-phrase the qusetion.

Has there ever been a type of aircraft never to experience a crash regardless of cause. So in other words all of the ones built are either still in service or retired?

Jared

 

[thomasxc]

im reading in a few places where quantas has never crashed, but that's an airline company, not an actual plane/plane manufacturer. other than that, I am finding nothing about a specific model that had never crashed, which doesn't especially surprise me..and weather would be in neither of those categories-it would be in one all its own.

 

[JaredJames]

Well, the A380 hasn't, but it's new...

I like it, never thought of it like that. It certainly answers my question and would be something to keep an eye on in the future. If one of those came down, how catastrophic do you think it would be considered? (obviously if fully laden with passengers). Depending on what brought it down, could be the worst air accident in history (a direct collision with another aircraft would certainly put it up there).

Jared

 

[JaredJames]

im reading in a few places where quantas has never crashed, but that's an airline company, not an actual plane/plane manufacturer. other than that, I am finding nothing about a specific model that had never crashed, which doesn't especially surprise me..and weather would be in neither of those categories-it would be in one all its own.

Same here, found a few airlines that haven't had crashes, but nothing on specific aircraft. I understand exactly what you mean by weather, I only grouped it as an aircraft should be designed for adverse weather and a pilot should be trained to handle certain situations (cloud/fog which has caused a fair few crashes) by use of instruments.

Jared

 

[thomasxc]

indeed, it is a massive airplane. and it would probably be considered highly catastrophic, even though people often fail to realize that airplanes are far safer than cars.

 

[JaredJames]

indeed, it is a massive airplane. and it would probably be considered highly catastrophic, even though people often fail to realize that airplanes are far safer than cars.

True, but you could argue that a big factor in that is because people travel in cars possibly every day of their lives, whereas they may only spend a couple of hours on an aircraft each year. And also, a car crash is less likely to end in tragedy than an air crash, I mean seriously how often do you see a car hit a wall and disintegrate simply because it run out of fuel?

Jared

 

[JaredJames]

Interesting point: I remember reading somewhere that the odds of an aircraft crashing into your home are somewhere in the region of 1 in 250000, making it statistically more likely to happen than you winning the lottery.

Jared

 

[Vanadium 50]

Defining a "crash" is not so simple. I was in what was called a "plane crash" - a luggage truck hit the plane when it was parked at the gate, slightly damaging it. This prompted an official investigation.

The A380, as has been pointed out, has a perfect safety record. I believe there have been no fatalities on the 777 or the A340, but there has been one hull loss each. I believe that there was only one fatal accident on a 767, although there have been deliberate fatalities.

 

[Borek]

Depending on what brought it down, could be the worst air accident in history (a direct collision with another aircraft would certainly put it up there).

Not necesarilly. Current record is 583 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_disaster), that is more than number of A380 passengers in standard configuration.

Sure, in Tenerife it was two planes colliding, which pushed the number up.

 

[thomasxc]

Defining a "crash" is not so simple.

very true...

 

[Office_Shredder]

As far as I know, no Boeing E-4 has ever crashed. Of course, only 4 have ever been produced, so maybe that doesn't count (they're also used for Air Force One, so they're treated slightly better than the average plane I imagine).

Anyway, this is almost what you're looking for

http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm

Further research into all models with 0 fatal events is a good place to start

Airbus 340 - has crashed (see link on website)

Boeing 717 - no crashes? I found this near the top of google
http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20080207-2

If bouncing on landing is the worst thing that's happened, I guess that should count as crash free

I looked into this further
http://www.aviationrecord.com/Home/NewsArticles/tabid/80/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/786/Default.aspx

So it looks like was the pilot damaging the plane by landing it poorly

Boeing 777 - lost power on landing once

 

[russ_watters]

I'm not really sure about the point of this thread, but since you asked some related questions, here are "accident" and death rates of specific airlines over the past 20 years. As you can see, there are quite a number with no fatal accidents: http://www.planecrashinfo.com/rates.htm

Here are fatality rates per billion passenger miles:
Train: .88
Plane: .87
Car: 11.7
http://www.geocities.com/dtmcbride/travel/train-plane-car.html

Now you can't directly compare these fatality rates because you take trips in planes that you wouldn't ever take in a car (you wouldn't drive from New York to London...), but still, a person would have to fly 13 times more miles than they drive to have an equivalent death risk. For example, my car will turn 5 this month and has 94,000 miles on it, so that's 19,000 miles per year. 13 times that is 123 round trips of 2,000 miles each (say, to Disney World from Philadelphia) per year.

Caveat: I do drive more than average, but recently got a new job with a much shorter commute than I used to have...

In any case, I don't know the reason for the questions being asked in this thread, but I don't see how they could possibly be useful. The main thing to realize about airline fatal accident statistics is that because airline crashes are so rare, you have to combine a whole lot of them to get useful statistics. Otherwise, you'd come to the nonsensical conclusion that you have no chance whatsoever of ever dying on a Southwest Airlines flight (for example).

 

[JaredJames]

Well I was actually just looking to answer my overall question for a project I am doing:
With all the modern technology used to design, simulate, test and fly aircraft these days, has the amount of crashes decreased? I was looking for this particular question to be answered purely as a basis to see if any older aircraft never crashed, particularly those without modern technology available for design.

I don't know the reason for the questions being asked in this thread, but I don't see how they could possibly be useful.

Unless you understand the use I am making of them, then yes, they are pointless.

Jared

 

[Andre]

The question is not very clear or useful. There are probably several glider types that never have had a crash like the http://www.aviodrome.nl/themapark/expositie/collectie-overzicht/images/AlsemaSagitta-b100.jpg of which only a handful were build. There may be several prototype to pre-series of types that never went in production and that never crashed. However there are probably no types of which considerable number are build, without a crash. So the really interesting number is the number of crashes per (100,000) flying hours. Note also that the cumulative lessons learned on aircraft construction has brought down the mishap rate enormously

 

[russ_watters]

Well I was actually just looking to answer my overall question for a project I am doing:
With all the modern technology used to design, simulate, test and fly aircraft these days, has the amount of crashes decreased?

The answer to that question is an unequivocable yes.

I was looking for this particular question to be answered purely as a basis to see if any older aircraft never crashed, particularly those without modern technology available for design.

Well, your main question is a pretty specific one that should have good data to answer it directly, rather than looking for indirect data about it. Ie, if you want to know if crashes have decreased, you should look for overall yearly data about crashes and see if they have decreased.

The NTSB has such data: http://www.ntsb.gov/AVIATION/Stats.htm

I tend to look at fatalities, but you said accidents, so here is a table of statistics of various classifications of accidents over the last 20 years, from the above link: http://www.ntsb.gov/AVIATION/Table2.htm

Now because the data still varies widely by year, you need to graph the data and construct trendlines to help interpret it. But I just dumped the data into Excel and found that using a second order polynomial (parabolic) trendline, "major" accident rates have dropped from about .5 to about .15 over the past 20 years. The "serious" category has also gone down, but the "injury" and "damage" ones went up then back down.

Now it would be useful to get data from the previous 20 years (I'm looking...you may have to try to construct the data yourself) because in the early days of jet-powered civil aviation, there were entire classes of crashes that were subsequently all but eliminated by technology. Two examples:

-Pilot error caused crashes on landing at night in clear weather due to lack of depth perception. This was solved by improving runway lighting to create depth perception and adding ILS to airplanes.
-Crashes caused by wind shear were all but eliminated due to improved weather forecasting and detection.

 

[russ_watters]

Here's an interesting link that shows that the relative causes of crashes have not changed much over the decades: http://www.planecrashinfo.com/cause.htm

In other words, pilot error and mechanical failure cause the same relative fractions of crashes as they used to. In other other words, if one had improved but the other hadn't, the fraction of one would go down while the other goes up.

 

[thomasxc]

interesting...

 

[russ_watters]

Here's a site that lists total yearly crashes since 1918, but it doesn't give the data per flight or passenger mile, so it doesn't tell you the relative safety...like I said, you might have to do your own data reduction. Still, it shows the number of accidents per year rose until about 1980, then started dropping.

http://www.baaa-acro.com/

 

[JaredJames]

Excellent, many thanks for the effort everyone. I do apologise for skirting round the issues regarding the main question, but I was hoping to compile my own answer for the questions and add some extra to the report (via diversifying the data by looking at other issues). However, you have certainly provided me with a great deal of information and it will prove invaluable to me. Russ, another great effort on your part!

Jared James

 

[russ_watters]

Not really related to your question, but interesting nonetheless...

Here it says that if you measure per trip, cars are 3x safer than airplanes, per hour, planes are 4x safer, and per mile (or km), planes are 60x safer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_safety#Statistics

 

[russ_watters]

This one should help with the growth of air travel:
http://www.bts.gov/programs/airline_information/air_carrier_traffic_statistics/

It says: in 1954, there were 35 million "enplanements" and in 2007, there were 768 million, a 20-fold increase in that time. That tells you that if, for example, the number of "accidents" is the same as it was 50 years ago (and apparently, it was), then the safety rate is around 20x better today than 50 years ago.

So that helps a lot...

Note, you'll need to scrutinize the data a lot better than I have to ensure they are consistent, ie, you don't necessarily want to combine accidents in the US with flights worldwide.

 

[russ_watters]

Er - I need to put a caveat into post 20: your question's wording doesn't mention rates, just the number of accidents. The number of accidents has not actually decreased much - the rate has.

 

[JaredJames]

Again, Russ you truly know your stuff. I was looking at the 'number of flights' vs 'number of accidents' in order to see, although the number of flights increase, the accident rate delcined / remained constant as that would certainly provide an insight into air safety. I think it would be beneficial to look at rates as well though as this would give a much better insight.

 

[mgb_phys]

The best records of planes that have flown for enough years/miles to be significant are probably the 777, only the engine failure at heathrow last year and the A330 which upto the crash last week had no accidents (excepting the test flight) - although they have both lost planes on the ground due to fueling fires/wars.

For rarer planes the statistics don't really work well, Concorde had no crashes for nearly 30years and then one accident put it into the ranks of the most dangerous - mainly because of the small number of overall flights.
The Boeing 737 has had more crashes than any other modern aircraft but remains statistically one of the safest because of the huge number of them flying.

The Quantas record is a little debatable. It is obviously a very safe airline and has the advantage of flying mostly long haul in very empty airspace, there have been a number of crashes of regional jets but they are owned by separate companies and not badged Quantas. So it get a bit legalistic - if say a United Airlines liveried regional jet crashes but it's actually operated by skywest - does this count as a United crash?

 

[Moonbear]

Defining a "crash" is not so simple. I was in what was called a "plane crash" - a luggage truck hit the plane when it was parked at the gate, slightly damaging it. This prompted an official investigation.

I'm pretty sure the OP means planes in the air that fall out of the air before the pilot intended to actually land them, thereby hitting the land with something other than landing gear.

I do think this is an interesting question. Afterall, if there were a model of plane that truly had a perfect record in this regard, it might be worth considering if they do something differently that is contributing to this good safety record. When planes crash, a lot of work is done to look at what went wrong to try to prevent future disasters, but it's also a pretty valid approach to look at those that have been doing things right and to borrow the safety features from those as well.

 

[JaredJames]

I'm pretty sure the OP means planes in the air that fall out of the air before the pilot intended to actually land them, thereby hitting the land with something other than landing gear.

Moonbear, thank you. I honestly couldn't find the right way to put that, I was going to go for something like "crashes between take off and landing" to narrow it down but I think you hit the nail on the head, perfectly.

I do think this is an interesting question. Afterall, if there were a model of plane that truly had a perfect record in this regard, it might be worth considering if they do something differently that is contributing to this good safety record. When planes crash, a lot of work is done to look at what went wrong to try to prevent future disasters, but it's also a pretty valid approach to look at those that have been doing things right and to borrow the safety features from those as well.

As part of my report, I was going to add a bit of depth by looking at other aspects of flight safety, not just crashes. As Russ points out, you can only truly study an aircraft that has been mass produced and has flown enough hours/miles to gather adequte flight data on it. So I decided to ask if anyone knew of an aircraft with a 'perfect' safety record. One which I could use to compare with another, perhaps one with a less than 'perfect' safety record and compare the features of each. Particularly looking at what improvements have been technologically inspired. This would then allow me to add that extra 'depth' instead of simply comparing number of crashes now to number of crashes fifty years back etc.

 

[Pengwuino]

Here it says that if you measure per trip, cars are 3x safer than airplanes, per hour, planes are 4x safer, and per mile (or km), planes are 60x safer.

I've heard people argue the cars being safer based on the number of trips. I've always felt it's such a bad argument considering you don't have the alternative to take an airplane down to the corner market and if people are like me (haha!), most their trips never hit a real main street with a lot of people going fast.

The idea of planes bieng 60x safer per mile is kinda scary though don't you think? If i wanted to take a cross-country trip, I'm 60x more likely to die if I drive?

 

[Moonbear]

Not really related to your question, but interesting nonetheless...

Here it says that if you measure per trip, cars are 3x safer than airplanes, per hour, planes are 4x safer, and per mile (or km), planes are 60x safer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_safety#Statistics

I wonder at what point the amount of air traffic will start to reduce the safety of air travel closer to motor vehicles? I expect that the number of other vehicles on the road in close proximity to your vehicle has a lot to do with chances of collision. Of course, it's also a bit harder to get a pilot's license and people watch them a lot more carefully to make sure they aren't doing stupid things like drinking before flying and gabbing on the cell phone and putting on makeup while lighting a cigarette and eating something from some fast food joint when they're supposed to be steering.

 

[Pengwuino]

I wonder at what point the amount of air traffic will start to reduce the safety of air travel closer to motor vehicles? I expect that the number of other vehicles on the road in close proximity to your vehicle has a lot to do with chances of collision.

Well I suspect that as air travel becomes more popular, road travel won't simply stagnate. I bet it'll always be safer, it'll just be higher accident rates on both ends.

 

[JaredJames]

I know slightly off topic:
When you consider the number of car crash deaths that occur each year, and consider how many people each year die due to air crashes, there can't be much in it. The only difference is, a high number dying all at once is better for the media to put out there as opposed to putting each pile up that occurs on the front page. At the end of the day, regardless of how a person / people die it is a tragedy. Yet the media only care about what sells and gets ratings.

Saying that, I certainly wouldn't expect, or want every crash plastered all over the news and papers. However I think the media should hold back a bit before making wild claims before the facts come out with an air crash, or over hyping the situation, putting false doubts about air travel safety into peoples minds.

WRT 'traffic levels', the sky is pretty crowded as it is, anyone whos stood around a major airport at a busy period sees just how close aircraft can get. However, I don't believe there could be mutch more congestion in the sky in regards to flight corridors and even with an increase, commercial aircraft have one major advantage over cars: their collision avoidance system. I've been in th cockpit of a few aircraft and the pilot has shown a screen with a number of various other aircraft cruising within a matter of miles of ourselves. If the aircraft get to close, the system gives advice and warnings in order to remove any threat posed.

Jared

 

[Vanadium 50]

I'm pretty sure the OP means planes in the air that fall out of the air before the pilot intended to actually land them, thereby hitting the land with something other than landing gear.

Fair enough. But under this criterion, the worst disaster involving airplanes (Tenerife, 1977) was not a crash. Almost 600 people died when two 747's collided on the ground.

 

[Cyrus]

WRT 'traffic levels', the sky is pretty crowded as it is, anyone whos stood around a major airport at a busy period sees just how close aircraft can get. However, I don't believe there could be mutch more congestion in the sky in regards to flight corridors and even with an increase, commercial aircraft have one major advantage over cars: their collision avoidance system. I've been in th cockpit of a few aircraft and the pilot has shown a screen with a number of various other aircraft cruising within a matter of miles of ourselves. If the aircraft get to close, the system gives advice and warnings in order to remove any threat posed.

Jared

Actually, the skies are not that crowded, and the only time you have to worry about other aircraft is at takeoff and departure. During cruise, you see a few aircraft pass by every once in a while. You have to understand, a controlled airport with a tower does not mean it also has a radar. Just because you are talking to the tower, does not mean they have a radar screen tracking you. Some airports just use visual tracking.

 

[Andre]

Well not everybody is convinced of that "big sky - small air plane" - theory, so TCAS was invented minimizing the chance of a mid air collision, although even that isn't monkey proof when people make mistakes.

TCAS will be replaced by http://www.eurocontrol.int/msa/public/subsite_homepage/homepage.html which should enhance safety once more.

 

[RonL]

I wonder at what point the amount of air traffic will start to reduce the safety of air travel closer to motor vehicles? I expect that the number of other vehicles on the road in close proximity to your vehicle has a lot to do with chances of collision. Of course, it's also a bit harder to get a pilot's license and people watch them a lot more carefully to make sure they aren't doing stupid things like drinking before flying and gabbing on the cell phone and putting on makeup while lighting a cigarette and eating something from some fast food joint when they're supposed to be steering.

You forgot to mention suckling babies, while driving and talking on the phone

As andre mentioned avoidance systems are going to play a major role in our future transportation methods. I think with computer control and electric power systems increasing in efficiency, as they are, we might not be too far from personal air cars.

 

[JaredJames]

Cyrus, I would be very interested in a link providing evidence for your 'visual tracking' method for major airports. I am a private pilot and understand how airports and radar work and no, not all airfields have radar, particularly the smaller ones, however I am yet to find amajor airport or any airport dealing in commercial aircraft that has no radar facility.
I suppose you could say I was a bit vague and didn't specify only commercial, but then again at no point did I say anything about an aircraft definitely being on radar by an airport, I simply mentioned that large aircraft at major airports have the TCAS system to help prevent collisions.
I also I didn't say the skies are crowded, I simply stated the current flight corridors are. There are a lot of aircraft using these areas. That excludes any private/light aircraft operating in the area.

Jared

 

[mgb_phys]

Here are fatality rates per billion passenger miles:
Train: .88
Plane: .87
Car: 11.7

On the rate/billion miles the space shuttle comes out as a very safe form of transport and the safest place in the world to be is onboard MIR.
If you count plane fatalities per mile traveled on the ground (ie crashes while on the runway) then flying comes out as dangerous as F1 car racing.

Otherwise, you'd come to the nonsensical conclusion that you have no chance whatsoever of ever dying on a Southwest Airlines flight (for example).

Southwest's only fatality was a kid in a car when a plane overshot the runway - so that means you are safer on the plane than driving to the airport.

 

[JaredJames]

I said take off and landing, as to me that is part of the flight. However, I did not want to include the taxi/parking phases etc., as you could argue that unless it is a fault with the aircraft, then it is not something that can be blamed on the aircraf design/manufacture. I hope you understand me as I can't find the words for what I wanted right now. A tug backing into an aircraft is not an aircrash is it, that's a dozy tug driver. I was more interested in things which occurred due to pilot error, manufacturing problems - design. Two aircraft colliding on the ground is a tuff one call, but to me that's just two pilots being plonkers. I personnally would be looking for incidents occurring from the start of the take off run to the point where they are safely stopped/taxiing* on the runway after landing.

(* is that how you spell it?)

Jared

 

[russ_watters]

On the rate/billion miles the space shuttle comes out as a very safe form of transport and the safest place in the world to be is onboard MIR.

MIR is a destination, not a transport. The space shuttle, no, though. A space shuttle mission goes about 5 million miles, there have been something like 150 flights, and 14 deaths. That's 10.5 per billion.

If you count plane fatalities per mile traveled on the ground (ie crashes while on the runway) then flying comes out as dangerous as F1 car racing.

I doubt that.