High standards make flying safer than ever

A report in The Australian says that air travel, despite the rash of safety incidents surrounding Qantas, has never been safer.

By any measure, travellers are far safer in the air than driving to the airport, according to Boeing and the US National Safety Council.

Every day, six million people are in the air and they’re 22 times safer than being on the road, the council says.

In fact, in a typical six-month period in the US, 21,000 die on the roads, which equates to the total loss of life in commercial airline accidents since 1960.

Since 1960, air safety has soared from 45 fatal accidents per million departures to less than one today as the industry learns from accidents, engines become more reliable and cockpit technology enters the computer age.

These factors, plus relentless oversight by the industry, led to an all-time low for accidents in 2007, with 25 fatal accidents and 744 fatalities. Most airline accidents and deaths occur in Third World countries, which account for 90 per cent of accidents but only 10 per cent of air traffic.

According to the International Air Transport Association, even Russian airline safety has improved.

Indonesia and southern Africa continue to be black spots.

Earlier this year, commenting on the improvement in air safety, association director general and chief executive Giovanni Bisignani said: “Air travel is the safest mode of transportation.

“In the 10 years from 1998, the accident rate was reduced by almost half — from 1.34 accidents per million flights to 0.75. The number of fatalities dropped significantly in 2007.”

The worst accident in 2007 was the TAM Airbus A320 crash-landing at Sao Paulo, which killed 187 passengers and crew and 12 people on the ground, according to Flight International.

The industry journal added that aside from that crash and one in Russia, which killed six of 57 passengers, “all the accidents to passenger aircraft took place in second or third-world economies or involved aircraft registered in them — usually both.”

The country with the worst record was the Democratic Republic of Congo, with six fatal crashes, while Indonesia had two of the worst fatal accidents for 2007 — an Adam Air Boeing 737-400 and a Garuda 737-400 at Yogyakarta, which killed 21 people, including five Australians.

At 0.09 and 0.29 accidents per million flights, North America and Europe had hull-loss (total plane destruction) rates better than the global average, the association says.

The spate of accidents in Indonesia pushed the Asia-Pacific accident rate to 2.76 hull losses per million flights, while the Latin American accident rate was 1.61 hull losses per million flights.

Africa had the worst record at 4.09 hull losses per million flights, making it six times less safe than the rest of the world.

The association is working with African airlines to bring them up to standard.

Possibly the main factor in reducing aircraft accidents has been the dramatic increase in cockpit automation.

An excellent example is the 747-400m, which features a fully computerised cockpit with 600 fewer dials and gauges than the analogue 747-200/300 and thus a significant reduction in procedures, particularly for safety.

For instance, for decompressions such as occurred on the Qantas QF30 flight last month there are just four procedures on the 747-400 compared with 20 for the early models.

The fatality safety record in commercial service of more recent aircraft, such as the 777, A330, A340 and 717 is perfect.

Airbus introduced the computerised “glass cockpit” with the A320 range in the mid-1980s, followed by the 747-400 in the early 1990s.

The perfect safety record of the 717, operated by QantasLink, affords an interesting snapshot of the effect that technology has had on aircraft safety.

This is the ultimate development of an aircraft that started life as the Douglas DC-9 in 1965, which was operated by Ansett and Trans Australian Airlines.

In its early years the DC-9 had a crash rate of 1.26 per million departures and an updated model, the DC-9 Super 80, renamed the MD-80, has a crash rate of 0.43 per million.

The ultimate version, the MD-95, renamed 717 after the merger with Boeing in 1997, has a perfect record.

Qantas continues to hold its perfect jet safety record, flying 330,000 flight sectors a year with 222 aircraft to 144 destinations.

The airline’s last loss of an aircraft was on August 24 1960, when a Lockheed L-1049C Super Constellation suffered an engine failure in the No3 engine on take-off from Mauritius to the Cocos Islands on route to Perth.

The aircraft overran the runaway, ended up in a ditch and caught fire, but quick action by the 12 crew enabled the 38 passengers to escape.

Prior to 1960, Qantas suffered a number of crashes and fatalities, mostly during World War II.  

A Report by The Mole from The Australian