It’s good to put the number of failures in perspective as you have done, but it would be a lot more meaningful if there were information on the total number of planes that were produced and put into service. For example, 1,050 Boeing 757s have been built, whereas only 255 Airbus A310s have been built, so if you compare the safety record of just these two planes (using the numbers you provided), the Airbus has a much higher per capita rate of failure. But before everyone condemns Airbus completely, there have been 3,893 Airbus A320’s built, so it’s per capita failure rate is actually better than that of the Boeing 757. Sorry, I don’t have the time right now to run through the numbers on all the planes, maybe someone else can do this.
“It’s good to put the number of failures in perspective as you have done, but it would be a lot more meaningful if there were information on the total number of planes that were produced and put into service.”
Okay, here you go, the numbers of planes manufactured are as follows:
A300 561 0.019% incident rate
A310 255 0.027% incident rate
A320 3893 0.003% incident rate
A330 616 0.005% incident rate
A340 365 0.005% incident rate
Total Airbus aircraft manufactured = 5690
Total overall incident rate = 0.006%
737 6000 0.014% incident rate
747 1416 0.025% incident rate
757 1050 0.009% incident rate
767 975 0.009% incident rate
Total Boeing aircraft manufactured = 9441
Total overall incident rate = 0.015%
So, by my calculations, Boeing has more than twice the failure rate of the Airbus equipment.
(total manufacture figures through May 2009 taken from Wikipedia, incident rates taken from airdisaster.com)
Please note, I have no dog in the fight other than being a frequent business traveler.