Men escaped from window after 737 crash The miracle men who walked away from a crashed Boeing 737 in Western Australia were initially trapped in the burning plane before managing to open a window to escape. The new details have been revealed in a preliminary report into the crash, which happened in February.
Mark McGowan says it's a 'miracle' the pilots walked free from the fiery wreckage. Pictures have emerged of the fiery scene of a Boeing 737 crash in southern WA — the first in Australia — as the state's premier hailed the pilots' "remarkable" survival.
Long-term aftermath
Trans Australia Airlines Flight 538 and the 1950 Australian National Airways Douglas DC-4 crash, with 29 fatalities each, remain Australia's worst civil air accidents and second-worst air accidents.
While Qantas has never had a fatal jet airliner accident, the Australian national airline suffered losses in its early days before the widespread adoption of jets in civilian aviation. These were mainly biplanes or flying boats servicing routes in Queensland and New Guinea.
In 2019, 220 aircraft were involved in accidents in Australia, with a further 154 aircraft involved in serious incidents (an incident with a high probability of becoming an accident). There were 35 fatalities from 22 fatal accidents.
According to research by Harvard University, flying in the US, Europe, and Australia is actually significantly safer than driving a car. Your odds of being in an accident during a flight is one in 1.2 million, and the chances of that accident being fatal are one in 11 million.
"Accidents are rare in aviation. There were five fatal accidents among 32.2 million flights in 2022," Willie Walsh, director general of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), said in a statement. "That tells us that flying is among the safest activities in which a person can engage."
4 Qatar Airways
Like Etihad, the airline has never had a fatal accident, and its only hull losses have come about due to hangar fires during maintenance. Qatar Airways' planes, particularly its widebodies, are some of the industry's newest designs, and its fleet as a whole has an average age of 10.9 years old.
Running since 1929, Hawaiian is among the oldest airlines in the world but, remarkably, it has never suffered a single fatal crash or hull loss.
Which airplanes crash the most? Cessnas and Pipers. In fact, the top 15 aircraft models in total crashes are all made by those two manufacturers – and nine of the top ten are Cessnas.
Qantas. The third oldest airline in the world, Qantas was cited in 1988 film Rain Man as an airline to have never had an aircraft crash. "Qantas. Qantas never crashed," says Raymond, played by Dustin Hoffman.
Flying is still considered to be the safest way to travel, but accidents can happen. Roughly, there are between 70-90 plane crashes per year worldwide, including both commercial planes and privately-owned ones.
Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashed near Buffalo, New York, killing all 49 on board and a person on the ground on Feb. 12, 2009. It was the last fatal U.S. airline crash and reshaped safety regulations for air travel.
Commercial plane crashes are nowadays very rare, with approximately 45,000 flights typically completed each day in the US, all without fatality.
Qantas was the lead airline with real-time monitoring of its engines across its fleet using satellite communications, which has enabled the airline to detect problems before they become a major safety issue.
Qantas has been named the safest airline in the world for 2023, regaining the top spot after being downgraded to second-best last year.
Utilizing the International Civil Aviation Organization safety occurrence data, from 2008 to 2019, these aircraft were compared in terms of occurrence type, occurrence category, phase of flight, injury level, and fatalities. It was found that Boeing had more accidents than expected, while Airbus had less (p = 0.015).
In 1926 and 1927, there were a total of 24 fatal commercial airline crashes, a further 16 in 1928, and 51 in 1929 (killing 61 people), which remains the worst year on record at an accident rate of about 1 for every 1,000,000 miles (1,600,000 km) flown.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is officially the flight with the most missing people (239 missing), although possible remains of the plane have been found in the Indian Ocean.
Therefore, the ERJ135/140/145 members of the family are among the safest airliners in history. The Airbus A340 is also one of the safest, with no fatal accidents involving any of the 380 units since its introduction in March 1993.
For reference, the NTSB considers anything that results in substantial damage to the plane or serious injury to be an accident. They don't use the word crash. Still, we can verify it is true. Small planes are involved in more accidents.
Plane crashes are extremely rare. The odds of dying in a plane are about 1 in 205,552. If you want to feel safer, some seats that have a better track record during crashes than others.