How old are the typical commercial airlines and how safe are they?

Question

Thanks.

Answer 1

Typically around 10 years old, a lot are brand new and a lot are quite old. Fuel costs are causing faster turnover and making fleets newer.

How safe? Extremely. The total deaths per year argument is bogus because many more people drive than fly, if it was on absolute numbers we could claim BASE jumping is safer than walking, but on a per BASE jump measure it's pretty dangerous.

For 2005 there were 22 deaths in 3 incidents in scheduled flights in the US. That's three fatal incidents in 18,728,000 flight hours. If cars could do 6,000,000 hours between fatal accidents we'd be doing pretty well.

Fatalities per 100 million passenger miles:-

Cars 0.71
Buses 0.05
Trains 0.02
Aircraft 0.002

So, 355 times safer than driving, 10 times safer than trains.

Answer 2

Extremely safe and the major airlines are 40+ years old... many dating back to the time of the DC-3... The airlines maintain their aircraft very well and... thinking about it, the thing that makes airplanes so safe is the fact that in the event of an emergency, the pilots can glide for 100+ miles and allow themselves 10 minutes or more to make a plan for safe landing of an airplane with multiple engine failure... its very safe... you are more likely to die on the way to the airport than after you have gotten there...

Answer 3

I fly all the time, for the most part Airlines are very safe, they are actually safer than driving your car. The Safe aspect of airlines depends on the maint/ dept.. How often are they maintained? the upside of this is that ALL Airlines are Regulated by the Goverment. At Least in the USA.

Answer 4

They are much safer than cars or train with all of the safety standards put into place now. Even though some commercial planes are over 30 years old like Northwest Airlines' fleet of DC-9s.

Answer 5

As safe as the regulatory oversight forces them to be, which in the US is extremely safe.
Some of the Latin American airlines, and certainly the African ones I would hesitate to fly on, but any airline that is US or European regulated I wouldn't question at all.

Answer 6

Extremely safe.

You would have to have two fully loaded airliners crash each day for a year to equal the number the number of people killed in automobile accidents every year.

Answer 7

Last I heard, the average age of the fleet was around 25 years. They are EXTREMELY safe, far more so than any other machine I can think of.

Answer 8

there's no typical....you could be flying in a brand new aircraft then transfer onto something 15 years old.....all are certified to the safest and strictest standards which is what matters....so ignore it when companies say 'fly a younger fleet' etc