Airbus SUCKS. Boeings are more robust

[conspirator]

5th loss of a Airbus A330

http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20090601-0

Don't let the following statistics fool you. Both 737 and 747 have been flying for decades and were best sellers in their time:
http://www.airfleets.net/crash/stat_plane.htm

The A330 and A340 are clearly inferior to Boeing 777 which has only 1 accident.

[marmar]

1. Northwest flies A330s to Europe....I happen to love them.

A much better and more comfy ride that the crappy 767.

[itsrobert]

3. Yeah, comfort over safety

Don't forget to buy the flight insurance.

[marmar]

5. I've flown them numerous times and I'm still here.....The only scare I've had on a plane....

.... was a hydraulics failure on a Boeing 757, but that would not lead me to suggest that 757s are unsafe.
How many A330s HAVE NOT CRASHED? And wasn't it the 737s and MD80s (a Boeing and a McDonnellDouglas-that-became-a-Boeing) grounded by the FAA for safety fixes?

[itsrobert]

7. Comparing apple and oranges

737's and MD80's have way more many miles/years on them than A330's.

[pnwmom]

18. I'd rather feel confident of the safety of the plane.

Boeing wins, hands down.

[Occam Bandage]

23. Only if you blame Airbus for planes getting blown up by terrorists.

See lower in the thread. Airbus has zero hull-loss accidents confirmed (which will increase to one most likely, given the Air France crash) in which the plane could possibly be blamed. Boeing also has one.

[Regret My New Name]

2. LIES! Airbus and Boeing both suck... Tupolev FTW...

Trust me on this, I know what I'm talking about....


...I have wikipedia.

[Regret My New Name]

4. and...

I also used to kickass at the game Aerobiz Supersonic on my SNES and Sega.

[itsrobert]

6. Boeing has over 75 years of experience; Airbus is an infant in comparison.

I'll fly with the Adult airline. Airbus will have more and more failures as their aircraft age. It's a matter of time.

[hayu_lol]

8. There are major differences between the way...

American aircraft and British(and presumably French as well)are designed and built.

One cannot help but remember the British Comet and it's flawed wing design and the failure of the builders to fully test the hull for compression/decompression failure. Comets started having serious hull problems at about 700 hours airframe time as I recall.

Given a choice, American aircraft are stronger and more reliable. Our aircraft are essentially built by one company.

[DavidDvorkin]

13. The comet was new territory

No one had the necessary experience at that time.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

14. Boeing outsources most of its component construction.

Only the final assemblies are done in-house. That's why their mechanics went on strike last year and probably why the 787 has been delayed. That's not to say they don't build good airplanes; they do. But their manufacturing process is not substantially different from Airbus.

[Occam Bandage]

25. Wait, are you seriously using the Comet as the basis for a claim of inferior European engineering?

The Comet was the absolute first jet airliner in human history. Of course there were going to be hiccups; they were doing things that literally nobody had done before.

Both Boeing and Airbus contract to vendors, manufacturers, and suppliers for many of their parts. I don't think there are any enormous paradigmatic differences between the logistics/procurement/assembly infrastructure of Boeing and of EADS.

[onehandle]

9. I have an in-law who was a mechanic for a Major American Airline.

He told me things.

I don't fly.

[Baby Snooks]

15. Remember Eastern!

What did Eastern in more than anything was the number of passengers who had "experiences" with their "not-so-well" maintained planes.

I spent a horrifying 15 minutes on a flight from Key West to Miami being told the smoke in the cabin was just "condensation" from the air conditioning. The smoke cleared before we landed. Everyone headed for the bar as soon as we got off the plane.

Not long after I was told about a flight from Miami to New York. Everyone's luggage was missing. Somehow never found. The woman who told me about this was told by someone who worked in the executive offices that in fact her luggage was in the Atlantic. A cargo door had somehow popped open as they were approaching New York. Fortunately they were at a low enough altitude it didn't cause any problems with decompression. Which translated I guess means the pilot and passengers didn't suddenly lose consciousness and the plane didn't careen into the Atlantic. Or just explode. Apparently a plane will explode under certain circumstances during sudden decompression. I say apparently because I never really asked anyone. I didn't want to know.

He thought it was funny. She did not. I never flew Eastern again. I will never fly Air France again. In fact I doubt I will ever fly again.

[MannyGoldstein]

10. They Are Both Safer Than Getting In A Bathtub, Or Driving A Car...

etc.

[conspirator]

11. True. But still I would prefer playing life lottery with a 777 rather than a A330 nt

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

12. The Airbus is actually a very good, safe airplane with an excellent safety record.

In fact, there have been nine incidents or accidents and only one hull loss due to an accident prior to AF447. The accident occurred on an early test flight in 1994. Since then, an airplane was damaged as a result of corrosive chemicals that were being transported in the cargo compartment; two Sri Lankan aircraft were destroyed on the ground by a Tamil Tigers attack; one lost power in both engines due to a faulty repair of a fuel valve but glided to a safe landing in the Azores; one encountered severe turbulence, which injured several people; and there was one incident in which the aircraft pitched down suddenly due to an apparent fault in an air data inertial reference system. Until AF447 the only fatalities occurred on the test flight in 1994. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A330

Its predecessor, the smaller A320, also has an excellent safety record; most of the accidents and incidents that have occurred, as with other aircraft types, involved pilot error or other causes, not defects in the aircraft.

[SurfingScientist]

16. Thanks for a more balanced view of the topic.

I bet the quality of maintenance by the operating airline, and the actions of humans - pilots and air traffic control - are what matters most for flight safety.

After all, it was an airbus (A320) that was tough enough to survive Sully's masterpiece water landing in the Hudson.

[Dead_Parrot]

17. Sorry, not buying it

Two of those 330 losses were caused by suicide bombers blowing up empty planes on the ground, one was written off by the insurers after being damaged by leaky barrels of corrosive liquid, and the '94 loss was a test flight simulating sudden loss of power.

Presumably, suicide bombers and acid bounce off 777s, and of course sudden loss of power is no problem at all.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

19. No no no, the OP has STATISTICS.

You can't argue with statistics, especially using facts. Statistics = better than facts.

[anigbrowl]

28. +1 internet for you.

The OP is either poorly researched or dishonest.

[JVS]

20. Is this argument even worth having? Mac vs. PC, yeah ok, I understand that argument.

But this thread has a back and forth taking place among people who will never (surprise me if you are an exception) make a decision about what kind of jet-liner to purchase.

[Occam Bandage]

22. You can decide which airline you want to fly on. nt

[JVS]

24. Not really given that the airlines operate under oligopolistic competition.

In many cases it would be a decision of fly or don't fly. This is not a smoothly functioning market by any means.

[Occam Bandage]

27. I agree it's not a smoothly functioning market,

I there is more competition than you're implying for most travelers, and I'd rather not veer off into all that. But anyway: the A330, A340, 767, and 777 are all widebodied, long-haul aircraft. Those are predominantly flown on international and cross-continental flights. Unless you live in a rural area with an airport only serviced by one feeder airline (and don't want to switch airlines mid-journey), you'd have your pick of most any domestic (and quite a few international) airlines for such a trip. Since fleet composition is public knowledge, and since airlines often tell ticket-buyers what type of plane each potential ticket is for, it wouldn't be hard to choose.

Say you want to go to Hawaii, and you live in Milwaukee. The ticket prices are most likely going to be roughly the same across airlines. The most convenient trips for you will be on Delta/Northwest to Honolulu on an A330 by way of Minneapolis, and United to Honolulu on a Boeing 777 by way of Chicago. If you prefer a Boeing, you'll book United.

[Occam Bandage]

21. Your post is so heavily spun I would say it approaches a lie.

From Wiki: * On 30 June 1994, an A330 owned by Airbus on a test flight simulating an engine failure on takeoff crashed shortly after take-off from Toulouse.

A crash during a test flight simulating an extreme condition doesn't worry me. That's what the tests are for. It takes a special kind of person to decide to become a test pilot; they're continually pushing the limits of both piloting and of the airplane itself. Sometimes they push one or the other a bit too far.

* On 15 March 2000, a 6-year-old Malaysia Airlines A330-300 aircraft was severely damaged by corrosive liquids that were being transported in the cargo hold on a passenger flight from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur. The corrosive liquid oxalyl chloride was mistakenly declared as non-toxic solid hydroxyquinoline. 18 canisters of the substance were transported via Kuala Lumpur intended to transit to Chennai. Five airport workers fell ill as they were unloading baggage from the aircraft at Kuala Lumpur after some of the canisters had leaked and chemicals spilled into the aircraft's cargo hold, resulting in extensive corrosion damage to the fuselage, wing box structure and landing gear. The aircraft was subsequently declared written-off. On 12 June 2007, a court in Beijing ordered China National Chemical Construction Corp, the owner of the cargo, to pay US$65 million to Malaysia Airlines for the loss.

It's not the plane's fault that someone filled it with corrosive liquids.

* On 24 July 2001, two Sri Lankan Airlines A330-243s were destroyed on ground by an LTTE attack at Colombo's Bandaranaike International Airport, Sri Lanka, along with an Airbus A320-200, an Airbus A340-300 and a squadron of military aircraft. Another two planes, an A320 and an A340 were also damaged but have since been repaired.

Surely you don't think that a Boeing would have survived an attack by the Tamil Tigers? Seriously, they were blown up while sitting on the ground.

And we have the current Air France loss, in which we have no idea what caused the problem. The Boeing 777's single accident was caused by ice forming in the fuel lines. So that's one accident caused by faulty engineering for the Boeing 777, and either one or zero for the Airbus A330. To say that Airbus engineering is "clearly inferior" to Boeing engineering on the basis of Airbus planes that were bombed on the ground and that had corrosive liquids improperly stored in them is fraudulent.

[NeedleCast]

26. Your chances of dying in a plane crash are so small they may as well not exist

If you fear riding in a certain type of plane or the chance of death as a result of getting on a plane frighten you, I wouldn't go to any web sites that contain statistics on things that might actually have a chance at killing you.

[Thothmes]

29. Much higher risk of dying in an auto accident going to or leaving

the airport.