I’m reluctant to upvote this, since it’s leaving out a lot of rather important caveats about the dataset. This depiction is presented as “the number of aviation incidents between the two giants since 2014 in the U.S. and international waters”. Here, “international waters” means the regions of the North Pacific Ocean, north Atlantic Ocean, and Gulf of Mexico, whose airspace services are delegated by ICAO to the United States, administered by the FAA. It’s not US airspace, but it’s administered as if it was, meaning accident reports get filed with FAA and NTSB, the source of this data.
The other caveat is that the total size of the Boeing fleet flying through FAA-administered airspace versus the total Airbus fleet is closer to 2-to-1, with nearly twice as many Boeing aircraft as Airbus aircraft, using 2018 estimates. This is including all the aircraft which US airliners currently operate, not just the newest ones they’ve bought in recent years.
Finally, in the reporting parlance, an aircraft “incident” means a non-serious injury event that happened. If major injuries or death occurred, that would be an “aircraft accident”. So an incident could include anything like:
Returning to the airport because of an unruly passenger
Another aircraft getting too close but not requiring evasive manoeuvres (aka minimum separation violation)
Overspeeding of the aircraft, such as exceeding 250 knots while still below 10,000 ft
An engine failure
A door plug falling off, causing minor injuries to three people but no deaths
A passenger getting their arm stuck in the toilet while reaching for their dropped phone
What reasons could Boeing aircraft have more incidents? Sure, they might be shoddily assembled. But it could also be a matter of fleet distribution: if Boeing makes more wide-body aircraft than Airbus, and thus carry more passengers, then passenger-related incidents would be higher represented for Boeing aircraft. Suffice it to say, this single graphic isn’t giving enough depth to a complicated situation.
That’s very interesting, thank you! From the article it seemed that both company shared the same market cap in term of number of planes, but your message explain the caveats of it, thanks again
Graph is shitty useless clickbait without proportionality — e.g. If Airbus planes only flew 1/6th the distance as Boeing, they’d be more dangerous than Boeing.
This however is implying that the distance traveled is the metric to measure against, which might skew data. It plays a role, but in aviation, other factors play important rules as well, like starts, landings, touch-and-gos, bad weather conditions flying hours, (as opposed good weather flying hours which relates to distance traveled) and so on. For military aircraft, even more metrics might exist, like contour flying hours, desert flying hours and whatnot.
If (accidents / distance traveled) was the only important metric, the safest means of transport would possibly be space travel.
Would be helpful to compare fleet sizes, how many accidents per total flights. Total accidents doesn’t mean much without a comparison of either those stats.
Not a great viz and also not a clear conclusion. Boeing is the top in North American sales and we are looking at incidents in the US and international waters. So we’re comparing apples and oranges here. And, as you suggest, there’s really no specifics on how many planes are being flown. Even revenue, which isn’t really accounted for, is a bad metric. Are Boeing planes more expensive (eg do they sell more large planes?), do they fly more miles, etc.
Airbus also in my experience is a better time, when it comes to comfort. Obviously safety takes priority, but I’m just saying the experience is better as well.
Interesting because I was wondering when it was created … the article says it was 1931, which is why there are no descriptions or mentions of the Second World War and the after effects of that period.
It would be interesting to see how this would be drawn with an additional 90 years of history … it’s also humbling to think that our recent 90 years of history is that important over thousands of years.
We have many small cities with nothing between them, very little intercity rail services, and an easy source of cheap second hand cars. I’m surprised we are first but I would have put money on top 10.
I’d say it’s very similar in Poland. A lot of small cities and villages, barely connected by roads and with little to no rails. Public transport is good but only in big cities. In those smaller ones, you’re lucky if there’s more than on bus per line per hour.
This is my firsthand experience, as I’m from one of those. 15 years ago there was a bus every 15-20 minutes. Nowadays there’s one per hour, sometimes less.
I’m honestly surprised that the US is in second, off the top of my head I only know one person that doesn’t own a car but her boyfriend has one that they share.
Something that brings that average up, in my view, is the number of classic cars we have on the road. These are vehicles that don’t do a lot of driving, but are technically in use.
There’s also a lot of people, especially trades, that have company vehicles that they can’t use for personal use, so they also have their own vehicle.
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