Shopping for safer flights
Quentin Fottrell
Published: July 8, 2013 11:29 a.m. ET
Is it worth buying tickets based on aircraft model?
QuentinFottrell
When deciding which flight to book, most travelers concern themselves with the price, the time of departure and whether there's a layover in Pittsburgh. But after tragedies like the crash of Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 in San Francisco Saturday, nervous flyers might be prompted to consider one additional factor: the safety record of the aircraft. Your plane is about to crash land ... now what?(6:22)
Dr. Maxine Lubner of New York's Vaughn College of Aeronautics explains how passengers should prepare for such a traumatic event Photo: Getty Images
Even though investigators and the black box recording seem to suggest pilot error was the most likely cause of the Asiana crash, such incidents do tend to heighten concerns for airplane safety, experts say. The only other major incident involving a 777 was in January 2008, when a British Airways flight landed short of the runway at London's Heathrow Airport after ice crystals clogged the fuel system. There were no fatalities, but new fuel systems were installed. Boeing has had recent trouble with other models, however. In January, the Federal Aviation Administration and European regulators ordered the temporary grounding of Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner jets. Japan's Transport Ministry and India's Directorate General of Civil Aviation followed suit. The agency took the action after a Japanese All Nippon Airways Co. 787 was forced to make an emergency landing due to suspected battery trouble. The FAA lifted the grounding in April and most Dreamliners were back in service by May. Unlike the FAA, passengers cannot order a safety inspection, but there is a trove of data available on how well different aircraft models fare. The National Transportation Safety Board maintains an aviation accident database dating back to 1962, which covers civil aviation accidents and incidents. It allows consumers to search by airline, aircraft, dates and weather conditions. A slew of independent sites like Airline-Safety-Records.com and Airsafe.com also rate airline safety records. Mining data from government agencies, the former site rates the airlines' accidents and incidents per takeoff; Airsafe.com catalogs incidents like airlines with the most fatalities, safest jet liners and crashes by model. See ntsb accident database , airline-safety-records.com and airsafe.com Of course, planning the most risk-free flight is not an exact science. AirSafe.com has a comprehensive listing of incidents, says Patrick Smith, an airline pilot for a large commercial carrier and the host of the website AskthePilot.com - but it may be hard to glean much useful information. "After you've hashed things out to the third or fourth decimal point, one airline or aircraft might appear to be safer than another," but the difference is not statistically significant, he says. And while data gives the frequency of incidents for airlines and aircraft, Smith says crashes often happen for reasons other than the planes themselves - as might be the case with the Asiana Airlines incident. Todd Curtis, airline safety analyst and founder of Airsafe.com, agrees. "It's hard to go from raw data about very rare events to a reliable prediction model," he says. Getty Images
It's also tough to determine the risk of flying on newer models. Boeing's 777 has been in operation since 1994, which makes checking its safety record easy. The fuel-efficient, long-range 787 Dreamliner, on the other hand, has only been in commercial service since October 2011. Since then, there have been reports of a fuel leak, cracked cockpit window, brake problems and electrical fires. "The industry calls them teething problems, which is a manner of admission that we don't have a viable method of avoiding these issues," says Charles Justiz, aviation safety consultant and former NASA research pilot. The Asiana Airlines crash is the first major U.S. airline crash in 12 years - a record streak - when an American Airlines flight to the Dominican Republic crashed after takeoff in Queens, New York, in November 2001, killing all 260 people on board and 5 more people on the ground. In that case, the cause was pilot error; overuse of the rudder controls in the wake of turbulence. In fact, 2012 was the safest year for flying since 1945, according to data released this month by the Netherlands-based Aviation Safety Network. There were 11 accidents on passenger flights versus a 10-year average of 16 accidents. "To put this into perspective, you're far likelier to get killed in the cab on your way to the airport than on the flight," says airline-passenger advocate Christopher Elliott.
Fottrell
Quentin Fottrell is a personal finance reporter and The Moneyologist columnist for MarketWatch. You can follow him on Twitter @quantanamo.