[2CAVTrooper]

“I seem the recall that the Airbus is significantly less safe than Boeing jets, even more if you exclude the 9/11/01 four jets lost to islamists.

Is this true?”

This is false. Contrary to what the resident Boeing cheerleaders on here say, Airbus has had fewer fatal crashes than Boeing.

Roughly a year ago, I pointed this out during the tanker debate.

Go here and look for yourself:
http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_manu.cgi?manu=Boeing

http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi-bin/view_manu.cgi?manu=Airbus

Here is a breakdown of the number of fatal crashes by model number (including sub-variants) since 1983 (1983 was first recorded fatal crash of an Airbus)

Boeing
707: 14 fatal crashes
727: 20 fatal crashes
737: 65 fatal crashes
747: 18 fatal crashes
757: 7 fatal crashes
767: 6 fatal crashes
777: 0 fatal crashes

Airbus
A300: 6 fatal crashes
A310: 6 fatal crashes
A320: 7 fatal crashes
A330: 2 fatal crashes (includes Air France flt 447)
A340: 0 fatal crashes

These include accidental shootdowns (KAL 007, Iran Air 655), acts of terrorism (Pan Am 103, etc) weather, equipment failures, etc.

The A330 BTW is the direct competition to the Boeing 767 and 777

[TChris]

The total number of crashes is meaningless. Boeing has been making and flying airliners much longer than Airbus.

What is the crash RATE, i.e. fatalities per passenger mile?

[buccaneer81]

737: 65 fatal crashes

The most widely produced and utilized passenger aircraft in history could reasonably be expected to have a higher "raw number" of accidents.