Planes that never crashed

A couple of reality checks on “never crashed” lists

Cheeks is basically right on the family/grouping point. The A318/319/320/321 share the same core design, and the 737NG (-600/-700/-800/-900) is the same story. Splitting them out makes the list look longer, but it doesn’t really tell you anything meaningful about safety.

That said, the bigger issue is the wording: “never had a disaster” / “never crashed” can mean a bunch of different things depending on what you count.

A more useful way to look at it is:

1. Fatal accident vs. non-fatal (a hull loss with everyone walking away is still a “crash” in plain English).
2. Hull loss vs. serious damage/incident (runway excursions, gear-up landings, fire, etc).
3. Passenger service vs. test flights / ferry / cargo / military use (test programs absolutely have accidents sometimes, but people tend to ignore them when making lists).
4. Exposure (how many cycles/hours and what kind of operations: short-haul/high-cycle vs. long-haul).

Why the “no fatal crash” claims get shaky fast

• Timeframe matters. “Since 1996” or “since it flew in 1994” isn’t the same as “in all operations worldwide including cargo/test.” Once you widen the net, a lot of “perfect” types lose that label.
• The sample size and usage profile can make a type look artificially “safe.” A low-production or low-utilization type can go years without a fatal event simply because it hasn’t accumulated the same exposure as, say, a 737 or A320 doing short hops all day.
• Family commonality cuts both ways: if you’re grouping for design reasons, you also have to accept that an event on one variant reflects on the family’s overall record (at least from the “public perception” angle).

Suggestion if you want to keep the thread useful
Instead of “planes that never crashed,” maybe reframe it as:

1. Types with no fatal passenger accidents (and specify if cargo/test is excluded).
2. Types with no hull losses.
3. Types with no fatalities in any operation (hardest category to keep “clean,” and you’ll have to define what counts).

Quick questions so we’re all talking about the same thing

1. Are you counting only accidents in scheduled passenger service, or all operations (cargo, test flights, ferry, military derivatives)?
2. When you say “disaster,” do you mean fatal accidents only, or any hull loss?
3. Do you want to group by family (A320 family / 737NG) or keep variants separate for production/ops differences?

If you answer those, it’s a lot easier to build a list that doesn’t fall apart the moment someone brings up a hull loss that didn’t have fatalities, or an accident outside passenger service.