Air safety

tauringhuang.

Aug 21st 2008
From Economist.com

The worst aircraft crashes in the past decade


Correction to this chart

AT LEAST 153 Spanair passengers and crew died on Wednesday August 20th when an aircraft crashed on take-off at Madrid's international airport. The McDonnell Douglas-82 had passed an inspection in January, but questions are being asked about the safety of the ageing MD-80 series. In March, American Airlines grounded its fleet of MD-80s while it performed safety checks, and around 300 people have died in accidents involving the planes in the past three years. The worst civil-aircraft crashes in the past decade have generally happened in poorer countries, and are spread fairly evenly between planes made by the big aircraft manufacturers.

AP



Correction: we incorrectly counted an accident in Brazil involving an ExcelAire aircraft and a Gol airliner in 2006 as two separate crashes. The Gol airliner alone suffered 154 casualties. We corrected this on August 22nd 2008.