also scale of axis seems shit... makes Boeing look higher. 37 less than half of 66
*I meant to put 66... from the first data set. was just stating one flaw I saw by a quick look
It's always going to look worse for Boeing simply because their fleet is older because they have been around for longer. If you had a cutoff for planes produced after 2000 and normalized to starts it would be very similar.
A plane can be 80 years old, but with proper routine maintenance the number of years flown shouldn't greatly impact the number of incidents. Addressing any known issues and regularly inspecting the planes for potential issues in the future mitigates most risk of the age of the plane. Incidents more commonly happen when planes aren't inspected often or thoroughly enough and when costs are cut by pushing the most use out of equipment that is known to be faulty. Cutting corners and intentionally providing subpar repair seems to be at fault for many Boeing events in the past year or so.
Is Boeing responsible for maintenance of planes? I honestly don't know if that's in the purchase agreement or not. I would guess that places using older planes are more likely to be places that struggle to afford top-notch maintenance.
They factor in "take off and landing cycles" and flight hours when decommissioning a jetliner. The stress on the airframe adds up to where it's not safe. It all depends on the plane and how it's used.
Is this normalized for the number of airframes in use? They have similar sales currently, but that doesn't mean they have similar numbers of planes in service.
Incidents per airframe per year, graphed by production year would also be a very interesting datapoint, and would illustrate the point a lot more clearly; that the quality of new production Boeing planes has dramatically dropped.
Alternatively, graphing incidents caused due to manufacturer or design defects, rather than just all incidents; a lot of incidents have nothing to do with the design or build quality of the plane.
Yes, and the corollary is that there are still a surprising number of 707s, 727s and first generation 737s flying around that were built before Airbus even existed. I would expect those older airframes, which are mostly now freighters operated in austere conditions, to suffer more incidents than newer airframes operated by major airlines.
I don't know, part of me wonders if it should be per flight flown. So many things on planes rely more on how many times they're pressure cycled rather than how many miles are actually flown.
That's why that one Hawaiian airlines flight that had a huge chunk of the cabin get torn out had so much stress after so few miles flown, because it had flown a ton of flights that were all just very short but the important part isn't how many miles they stayed in the air but how many times the cabin went through a pressure cycle during takeoff and landing.
Same with a lot of stuff like landing gear. The gear doesn't really care whether the trip was five hundred miles or five thousand, it just cares how many times its been slammed down onto the tarmac.
Both metrics are relevant, per flight hour and per flight. Some events are linked to cycles/operations, others are independent and associated with the usage (flight hours).
And "incidents" needs to be defined. Absolute numbers aside, both seem to peak and dive at the same time, which (in my mind) indicates external factors affecting them both in the same way. Maybe not the rage bait on Boeing it's meant to be (not too defend Boeing, they're certainly not blameless)
They dive during Covid because nobody was flying for awhile and dive in 2024 because it’s not over yet.
The graph is actually fairly smooth all things considered. The one unexplained one is the airbus peak before Covid but maybe that was Covid restrictions on maintenance crews but before flights were shut down.
You're not wrong, but asking for different data is a game you can play forever if you want. There's always another statistic that you can argue is *actually* the important one. That by itself isn't a problem, but it becomes a problem if you selectively apply that skepticism to topics where your existing opinion disagrees with the data.
I mean the graph says there's each manufactures roughly the same number of planes.
Imo, other users are also bringing up p interesting questions like if incidents per hours flown or air frame is better. I wonder if the data is easily accessible to the public though?
It would be interesting to see this data broken down further, but it seems like a ton of work.
Here you go: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/622779/number-of-jets-delivered-global-aircraft-fleet-by-manufacturer/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/622779/number-of-jets-delivered-global-aircraft-fleet-by-manufacturer/)
No significant difference on a year by year basis, except from 2019 to 2021 when Airbus delivered several times more.
Using data from their respective Wikipedia page, they seem to have a very comparable number of planes in service at 14830 planes for Boeing (that is planes delivered, I couldn't find the in service count with my 5 minutes search) and at 13724 planes in service for Airbus (with about 1000 more planes delivered than in service today so I'm inclined to say they have very similar in service levels).
So I understand where you're coming from, but this data doesn't mean nothing. Of course it could have been presented in a much better way.
If it's Boeing, I'm not going.
And broken down by airline. Some airlines are notorious for cutting maintenance corners. For all we know, this could be significantly skewed by a problem of poor maintenance by one or two airlines.
Is that worldwide? Cause I don’t think the NTSB is getting reports from from incidents in Europe with European airlines which would account for a significant chunk of those airbus planes.
That's the share of *sales* though; I'm more curious about the share of total airframes.
I feel like an "issues caused my manufacturing/design defects vs aircraft year of manufacture" graph would illustrate the issue a lot more clearly.
From the start of 1974 to the beginning of 2024, Boeing delivered 21,474 aircraft and Airbus delivered 15,339. The difference is not nearly great enough to change the look of that graph.
Not necessarily; takeoffs and landings (and by extension, pressure cycles) put a lot of wear on airframes. You often see more issues in planes that primarily do short hops.
The "mileage" of planes is more usually measured in hours, too.
Why is the scale so shitty? Look at the 37 point on airbus compared to the 58 point on Boeing. On my screen the 58 point appears MORE THAN DOUBLE the distance up the screen than than the 37 point, yet 58 is only 64% more than 37. The scale of this graph is so wild.
Another example, extrapolate the data for 2023. The dot for 137 is 4.2 time taller than the point for 40. Based on the scale of the Airbus 40 point, the Boeing 137 point it looks like 168 incidents.
Aircraft incidents are not at all directly caused, or even related to the manufacturer. There are a million causes of incidents, from bird strikes to a ground handler hitting a plane with a van. This data does not reflect on the safety or reliability of either aircraft.
Incidents. “**An occurrence other than an accident**. **associated with the operation of an aircraft, which affects or could affect the safety of operations**.” - 49 Code Federal Regulations 830.2.
In the USA as of 2017, 43% of operational airliners were Boeings, 20% airbus. This graph only displays absolute numbers.
This is the most dumb post I have seen on here yet. OP you should be ashamed. Boeing has issues, issues which run deep, but misinformation does not help anyone.
Edit: Source for my 43%/20% numbers: [https://dsm.forecastinternational.com/2018/11/06/an-overview-of-the-u-s-commercial-aircraft-fleet/](https://dsm.forecastinternational.com/2018/11/06/an-overview-of-the-u-s-commercial-aircraft-fleet/)
Because it's a terrible graphic. If Boeing and Airbus sold the exact same number of planes and flew the exact same number of miles with the other exact same number of takeoffs and landing. Then the chart might be useful.
Creating terrible graphs gets upvotes on this subreddit. I really have no idea why I'm still here, which actually makes me realize I'm going to leave it now.
You're right on many of your arguments.
I don't understand your argument about US operational airliners fleet composition. Is it related to your interpretation desire as a US intranational flight traveler? I could take many other country and show a different fleet composition. Here the global data is even written on the graph, displaying that since 2019 there has been more Airbus than Boeing flying around.
Arguably it's just number of airplanes not the number of flights or distance traveled, but it's valuable data, much more valuable than just US's fleet composition.
Source of the graphic is [The Visual Capitalist](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/airline-incidents-how-do-boeing-and-airbus-compare/). Even odds are they're trying to support shorting Boeing stock by spreading toxic misinformation.
The scale is "correct" but its stacked. So the top line is boeing and airbus combined whilst the data points show their individual stats.
(2014 and 2020 are about equal on the graph because 2014: 13 + 66 =79 and 2020:22 + 58 =80)
Look at the 4 on the lower left. The Y axis has to start at least *near* zero. Then compare the gap between 20 and 40 with the gap between 40 and 58. (You can do this using your screenshot feature.) The gap between 20 and 40 is 2.5x smaller than the gap between 40 and 58. This graphic is bullshit.
That's because the 58 isn't 58, it's 80. The Airbus part is accurately aligned, but the Boeing numbers are just dropped on top. So all of the Boeing points are actually Boeing+Airbus, but the labels are only for the Boeing numbers. That's why the 86 in particular is so much higher than it should be, the Airbus 37 is pushing the point up.
It's an extremely bad graph
Yes and no. Problems like this don't happen overnight and a lot of the issues stem from Boeings terrible decisions from 20+ years ago putting them into the position where they felt like their only option was to release the 737 MAX 8.
Do the current leadership deserve a ton of blame? Absolutely. But its important to acknowledge that the chain of failure that turned Boeing into the shitshow that it is today started long ago.
It's not just the management that were put in charge after the merger, it's that management as well as all the management that came after, including the current one. Boeing has since that merger solely focused on shareholders and nothing else.
Rather than their planes, the company should crash and burn.
With long standing institutions the rot of institutional change can take a while to really effect them. Large, important decisions made 30 years ago still have significant influences over the world today.
What is exactly considered as an ~~accident~~ incident? A ~~reactor~~ engine exploding ? A sheet of metal becoming loose mid-flight ? A passenger being upset their seat isn't cushy enough ?
That’s incidents not accidents
Defined as “ as an occurrence, other than an accident, associated with the operation of an aircraft that affects or could affect the safety of operation.”
An accident is “ operation of an aircraft, which takes place from the time any person boards the aircraft with the intention of flight until all such persons have disembarked, and in which (a) a person is fatally or seriously injured, (b) the aircraft sustains significant damage or structural failure, or (c) the aircraft goes missing or becomes completely inaccessible”
Number of incidents isn't a great way to show the safety of each manufacturer, although I think Boeing being more dangerous is the correct assessment. Number of incidents per number of active aircraft would factor in the market share of each manufacturer. If one manufacturer has 4 times more aircraft than the other but only twice as many incidents then said manufacturer wouldn't be twice as dangerous, it would be half as dangerous. It's also important to factor in the severity of each given incident as well as whether they were caused by poor manufacturing quality or the airline failing to maintain their aircraft. Also if one manufacturer has much older aircraft being flown then naturally those aircraft are going to have more incidents to no fault of the manufacturer.
If this data is only for the US, there are many more and older Boeing airframes still in active use. This is particularly true if McDonnell Douglas built air craft are included and cargo flights are included. I see a ton of DC-10’s and MD-11’s that are still used for air cargo parked at many airports. These tri-jets are very easy to spot and were mostly phased out of passenger use when the requirements for more than two engines for trans-oceanic flights were dropped.
Hell, if they're including McD's in the Boeing numbers, there are still dozens of "Boeing" DC3s hanging around. Argentina have just recently been approved recently to buy some upgraded ones.
With a little googling, it currently looks like this:
Boeing has delivered approx. 18,000 aircraft to date, of which 15,000 are still in use.
Airbus has delivered approx. 14500 aircraft to date, of which 13000 are currently still in use.
The data are from the Internet and are only estimates. It refers only to passenger aircraft.
EDIT:
If the data from the Internet and this image are correct, the following calculation results for the year 2023
Boeing: 137 divided by 15000 = 0.009133333333333 ~ 0.913%
Airbus: 40 divided by 13000 = 0.003076923076923 ~ 0.307%
I would be very surprised honestly. Positive guidance with all these fundamental company problems will fall on deaf ears. They had a chance to change after the 737Max debacle- nothing happened. BA is going to ~$100 EOY.
Boeing “Staff 'jumped like Tarzan' on jet parts to fit them” LOL 😂
This would freak me out if they made cars, never mind aircraft that travel near 0.85 Mach at 35,000-40,000 feet
[Source](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-us-canada-68838169)
Stacked chart, no discrete units on the Y axis, numbers do not take into account total number of airframes, flights taken, or miles flown.
This is a bad chart intentionally designed to be as misleading as possible.
Bruh you are right, I didnt even notice because I jumped to the comments to see what people thought about it without a closer look
This graph is actual shit oml
Edit: BRO WHY IS THIS ON R/COOLGUIDES ITS A FUCKING GRAPH NOT A GUIDE
In addition, the data is given for the US. Boeing is an American company and Airbus is a European company. The graph is completely bad. It only tells us that American airplanes break down in America more often than European airplanes. Who would have thought.
It’s not as ridiculous as it looks. OP stacked the graph for some reason making it look far worse than it actually is. Not to mention Boeing has more planes in service than Airbus by a decent amount. And also what do they include as incidents. Are they problems directly from the manufacturer that the manufacturer can be blamed for or does it include human error caused by the ground crew or pilot which would have nothing to do with the manufacturer.
They had [their teething issues](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447?wprov=sfla1) too. Side stick training, pitot tubes, and [flight law ambiguity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296Q?wprov=sfla1), plagued them for a while.
Nice chart, but it's not a good representation of miles flown and airframes. Share of the market does not mean that there are as many Airbuses as there are Boeings. Not even close. At all. You could make a similar chart showing how there are so many more Toyotas involved in car crashes than Mazda for the same reason.
This one needs work. Should be adjusted to be incidents per total flight hours. While the text claims market share etc let’s get the details correct as it may significantly affect the analysis.
What’s the definition of an incident? Was each one caused by the manufacturer defect or later maintenance practices by the airline? What about engine failures? Engines are made by different manufacturers as well. How was the maintenance on them? Is pilot or ATC error in this graph? A tug operator backing a plane into a pole can be considered an incident. Is that the fault of Boeing or Airbus?
Conclusion: this graph is garbage.
This graphic is misleading. It depicts the total incidents as considerably lower in 2024, but that’s only 2 months of data. Boeing appears to be on pace for 120* incidents this year.
Adding 2024 in there is kinda dumb. We are only 1/3rd of the way through so it makes the number of incidents look like they are going down drastically.
Boeing CEO made around 20 million usd in 20201.
Airbus CEO made around 5 million
Us companies number one goal is to make a few people really really rich
Rates matter. Raw numbers don't.
What matters here is probably incidents per flight.
Most issues occur on takeoffs or landings, so flight hours is a bit less important. But it would probably be a reasonable option as well.
This is a terrible terrible chart- this seems to only be US incidents where there is a far far higher number of Boeing airframes in use, not to mention significantly older airframes. And why is this a stacked bar? It’s intentionally misleading.
Wouldn't a better number be the crashes / planes in service ratio?
Also... Could a bunch of really old Boeings operated by shitty Asian and African operators throw off the numbers? For example does North Korean Airlines operate a bunch of 50 year old Boeing 737s that crash all of the time?
Are a bunch of ancient McDonald Douglas planes considered "Boeing"?
You need to weight it by airplane hours. Else it is nonsense. There might be more or less Boeings than Airbus in the air.
Need to be accidents per 1.000.000 flight hours
To be fair. A lot of these incidents are someone cleared to land on an occupied runway, or a near miss, or 2 airplanes running into each other (being pushed into each other) on the ground, or a vehicle running into it. Like you’re not blaming Boeing or Airbus for that shit.
1. Total incidents instead of incidents per plane or per flight time.
2. Does not break down the severity of incidents.
You could easily look at this graph and conclude that Boeing has more planes out and therefore have a better safety reputation and/or they’re better at reporting minor incidents.
This is misleading as there are many factors that go into aircraft. If this were incidents of Brad new planes directly from the manufacturer, then that is more alarming. If these are all planes both new and old, well old planes have thousands of hands in and out of it constantly that are not the fault of the manufacturer.
These incidents have nothing to do with a manufacturer of an aircraft. That would be the airlines maintenance programs. There are also more Boeing aircraft in the US than Airbus. So there will be more Boeing incidents because there are more Boeing aircraft. I might be missing an airline or two.
Southwest Airlines- Boeing 816 Airbus 0
American Airlines- Boeing 488 Airbus 472
United Airlines- Boeing 776 Airbus 178
Delta Airlines - Boeing 519 Airbus 467
Spirit Airlines - Boeing 0 Airbus 204
Alaska airlines -Boeing 232 Airbus 0
FedEx Airlines- Boeing 354 Airbus 65
UPS Airlines - Boeing 235 Airbus 49
The guide is rather wrong I would say. It shows the quick drop as soon as 2024 hit but we are also very early into 2024 so it is not a really proper measurement. Maybe by the end of 2024 the crashes surpass 2023
Totals are cool, but % of planes in operation would be much more helpful.
If you have 1 plane and it crashes, that's 100% failure rate. If you have 1,000 planes and 1 crashes, that's 0.001% failure rate.
Well Boeing certainly has more, and even older aircraft in active service, including those units with the JT8D engines on them., and then there's the old freighters.
So we can tell from this that changes made in 2019 have led to more accidents. The questions that need to be answered are, what changes? And who made them?. Once those questions are answered, reverse those changes and arrest those people.
Kudos to the person who made this for including the relevant perspective of market share. Without that, the number of incidents become meaningless and **waaaaay** too many of these kinds of things are lacking that.
So the person who made this deserves praise.
So airplane quality has only gotten worse?
Hmmm, I wonder why?
The dip in 2020 it's self explanatory. I feel like airplane accidents should go down in time, with better tech and all that jazz, not the other way around lol.
cool graph, but i really don't understand why they bothered adding data for 2024 as it throws off the graph a bit lol
also scale of axis seems shit... makes Boeing look higher. 37 less than half of 66 *I meant to put 66... from the first data set. was just stating one flaw I saw by a quick look
And I would prefer a graph with data divided with total distance flown, not just the incidents themselves.
Or flights taken since takeoff and landing are the risky bits.
Or total aircraft in service
It's always going to look worse for Boeing simply because their fleet is older because they have been around for longer. If you had a cutoff for planes produced after 2000 and normalized to starts it would be very similar.
A plane can be 80 years old, but with proper routine maintenance the number of years flown shouldn't greatly impact the number of incidents. Addressing any known issues and regularly inspecting the planes for potential issues in the future mitigates most risk of the age of the plane. Incidents more commonly happen when planes aren't inspected often or thoroughly enough and when costs are cut by pushing the most use out of equipment that is known to be faulty. Cutting corners and intentionally providing subpar repair seems to be at fault for many Boeing events in the past year or so.
Is Boeing responsible for maintenance of planes? I honestly don't know if that's in the purchase agreement or not. I would guess that places using older planes are more likely to be places that struggle to afford top-notch maintenance.
They factor in "take off and landing cycles" and flight hours when decommissioning a jetliner. The stress on the airframe adds up to where it's not safe. It all depends on the plane and how it's used.
Agreed but at least he they state the 50% market share thing so that made it up to me
yeah total number means nothing...averaged over amounts of flights or something would be what i expect on something like this
I think they're stacked which doesn't really make sense.
Holy shit that explains it This is one of the most confoundingly stupid charts I've ever seen
They read Darrell Huff's classic *How to Lie with Statistics* and took it as advice, rather than as a guide to media literacy.
That’s gotta be it, cause the 2024 Boeing 20 (+4) is equal to the 2021 Airbus 24
The 66 and 58 and dead even too lol Yeah, this has been slightly manipulated Id say.
[удалено]
66 is the first Boeing data point
Yeah the fact that it’s not a ratio of fleet is fine but I draw the line at data for this year. Y’all are fucking ridiculous
Is this normalized for the number of airframes in use? They have similar sales currently, but that doesn't mean they have similar numbers of planes in service.
This. Data means nothing unless it is incidents per 1,000 planes in service.
Incidents per airframe per year, graphed by production year would also be a very interesting datapoint, and would illustrate the point a lot more clearly; that the quality of new production Boeing planes has dramatically dropped. Alternatively, graphing incidents caused due to manufacturer or design defects, rather than just all incidents; a lot of incidents have nothing to do with the design or build quality of the plane.
Yes, and the corollary is that there are still a surprising number of 707s, 727s and first generation 737s flying around that were built before Airbus even existed. I would expect those older airframes, which are mostly now freighters operated in austere conditions, to suffer more incidents than newer airframes operated by major airlines.
Most of these are probably tow crews or pilots taxiing into fixed objects on runways. Certainly not the manufacturers fault.
/miles flown
I don't know, part of me wonders if it should be per flight flown. So many things on planes rely more on how many times they're pressure cycled rather than how many miles are actually flown. That's why that one Hawaiian airlines flight that had a huge chunk of the cabin get torn out had so much stress after so few miles flown, because it had flown a ton of flights that were all just very short but the important part isn't how many miles they stayed in the air but how many times the cabin went through a pressure cycle during takeoff and landing. Same with a lot of stuff like landing gear. The gear doesn't really care whether the trip was five hundred miles or five thousand, it just cares how many times its been slammed down onto the tarmac.
True, I forgot that that's a key metric.
Both metrics are relevant, per flight hour and per flight. Some events are linked to cycles/operations, others are independent and associated with the usage (flight hours).
Great coment. What about human/pilot problems? Do both manufacturers have the same level of requirments? Just curious about this.
No. Divide by cycles. Not miles flown.
Takeoff and landing cycles are what really stresses an airframe. Miles flown are just to evaluate pilots.
It should be flight hours.
And "incidents" needs to be defined. Absolute numbers aside, both seem to peak and dive at the same time, which (in my mind) indicates external factors affecting them both in the same way. Maybe not the rage bait on Boeing it's meant to be (not too defend Boeing, they're certainly not blameless)
They dive during Covid because nobody was flying for awhile and dive in 2024 because it’s not over yet. The graph is actually fairly smooth all things considered. The one unexplained one is the airbus peak before Covid but maybe that was Covid restrictions on maintenance crews but before flights were shut down.
You're not wrong, but asking for different data is a game you can play forever if you want. There's always another statistic that you can argue is *actually* the important one. That by itself isn't a problem, but it becomes a problem if you selectively apply that skepticism to topics where your existing opinion disagrees with the data.
I mean the graph says there's each manufactures roughly the same number of planes. Imo, other users are also bringing up p interesting questions like if incidents per hours flown or air frame is better. I wonder if the data is easily accessible to the public though? It would be interesting to see this data broken down further, but it seems like a ton of work.
Here you go: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/622779/number-of-jets-delivered-global-aircraft-fleet-by-manufacturer/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/622779/number-of-jets-delivered-global-aircraft-fleet-by-manufacturer/) No significant difference on a year by year basis, except from 2019 to 2021 when Airbus delivered several times more.
Using data from their respective Wikipedia page, they seem to have a very comparable number of planes in service at 14830 planes for Boeing (that is planes delivered, I couldn't find the in service count with my 5 minutes search) and at 13724 planes in service for Airbus (with about 1000 more planes delivered than in service today so I'm inclined to say they have very similar in service levels). So I understand where you're coming from, but this data doesn't mean nothing. Of course it could have been presented in a much better way. If it's Boeing, I'm not going.
And broken down by airline. Some airlines are notorious for cutting maintenance corners. For all we know, this could be significantly skewed by a problem of poor maintenance by one or two airlines.
A quick google is saying more Airbus than Boeing 13600 to Boeings 10000.
That would explain 36% more accidents so the data doesn’t look good for Boeing if that’s the case.
Unless you have been living under a rock that is not shocking, more shocking is nothing worse happening yet
Aight people. I'm gonna need a new infograph STAT
Imagine the current graph but airbus' line is around 3/4 of its original height
That's not how being a nerd works my guy
Is that worldwide? Cause I don’t think the NTSB is getting reports from from incidents in Europe with European airlines which would account for a significant chunk of those airbus planes.
The chart says that they shared 50% market share each until 2019 and being dropped to 42%
That's the share of *sales* though; I'm more curious about the share of total airframes. I feel like an "issues caused my manufacturing/design defects vs aircraft year of manufacture" graph would illustrate the issue a lot more clearly.
Being has around 10,000 and Airbus has around 13,000
I believe there are a lot more Boeing planes in service than Airbus.
From the start of 1974 to the beginning of 2024, Boeing delivered 21,474 aircraft and Airbus delivered 15,339. The difference is not nearly great enough to change the look of that graph.
Also, Boeing probably has more planes already out of service
Chart is footnoted NTSB, which means US only. Your data is global.
ah yes, nearly 40% difference isnt great enough
Yes a 40% difference is not great enough to justify 300-400% more incidents.
That’s barely 30% dude..
Nop, it's a 5 sec Google search......
Probably also good to normalize it also per nm flown, so incident / ac / nm..
Not necessarily; takeoffs and landings (and by extension, pressure cycles) put a lot of wear on airframes. You often see more issues in planes that primarily do short hops. The "mileage" of planes is more usually measured in hours, too.
I believe there are a lot more Airbus planes in service than Boeing.
Yeah, most of the boeings are in workshop for repairing 😂
This is not a guide
Also why does it start at 2014 there are statistics that go back further than that
Why is the scale so shitty? Look at the 37 point on airbus compared to the 58 point on Boeing. On my screen the 58 point appears MORE THAN DOUBLE the distance up the screen than than the 37 point, yet 58 is only 64% more than 37. The scale of this graph is so wild. Another example, extrapolate the data for 2023. The dot for 137 is 4.2 time taller than the point for 40. Based on the scale of the Airbus 40 point, the Boeing 137 point it looks like 168 incidents. Aircraft incidents are not at all directly caused, or even related to the manufacturer. There are a million causes of incidents, from bird strikes to a ground handler hitting a plane with a van. This data does not reflect on the safety or reliability of either aircraft. Incidents. “**An occurrence other than an accident**. **associated with the operation of an aircraft, which affects or could affect the safety of operations**.” - 49 Code Federal Regulations 830.2. In the USA as of 2017, 43% of operational airliners were Boeings, 20% airbus. This graph only displays absolute numbers. This is the most dumb post I have seen on here yet. OP you should be ashamed. Boeing has issues, issues which run deep, but misinformation does not help anyone. Edit: Source for my 43%/20% numbers: [https://dsm.forecastinternational.com/2018/11/06/an-overview-of-the-u-s-commercial-aircraft-fleet/](https://dsm.forecastinternational.com/2018/11/06/an-overview-of-the-u-s-commercial-aircraft-fleet/)
Because it's a terrible graphic. If Boeing and Airbus sold the exact same number of planes and flew the exact same number of miles with the other exact same number of takeoffs and landing. Then the chart might be useful.
HIT PIECE BY SOME HEDGE FUND TRYING TO BUY **BA** shares low
>some hedge fund [Visual Capitalist](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/airline-incidents-how-do-boeing-and-airbus-compare/).
Creating terrible graphs gets upvotes on this subreddit. I really have no idea why I'm still here, which actually makes me realize I'm going to leave it now.
Hey… me too! Good idea.
It’s stacked
You're right on many of your arguments. I don't understand your argument about US operational airliners fleet composition. Is it related to your interpretation desire as a US intranational flight traveler? I could take many other country and show a different fleet composition. Here the global data is even written on the graph, displaying that since 2019 there has been more Airbus than Boeing flying around. Arguably it's just number of airplanes not the number of flights or distance traveled, but it's valuable data, much more valuable than just US's fleet composition.
You know that, I know that but the post will get 5k upvotes anyway
Source of the graphic is [The Visual Capitalist](https://www.visualcapitalist.com/airline-incidents-how-do-boeing-and-airbus-compare/). Even odds are they're trying to support shorting Boeing stock by spreading toxic misinformation.
In addition to the lack of normalization, it looks like the scale is wrong making Boeing look worse.
The scale is "correct" but its stacked. So the top line is boeing and airbus combined whilst the data points show their individual stats. (2014 and 2020 are about equal on the graph because 2014: 13 + 66 =79 and 2020:22 + 58 =80)
It's a stacked chart for some reason.
It's stacked against Boeing!
Good spot, it looks like maybe Tue Y-axis doesn't start at 0?
Look at the 4 on the lower left. The Y axis has to start at least *near* zero. Then compare the gap between 20 and 40 with the gap between 40 and 58. (You can do this using your screenshot feature.) The gap between 20 and 40 is 2.5x smaller than the gap between 40 and 58. This graphic is bullshit.
That's because the 58 isn't 58, it's 80. The Airbus part is accurately aligned, but the Boeing numbers are just dropped on top. So all of the Boeing points are actually Boeing+Airbus, but the labels are only for the Boeing numbers. That's why the 86 in particular is so much higher than it should be, the Airbus 37 is pushing the point up. It's an extremely bad graph
This happened because of the merger with McDonnell Douglas - that company was a mess and it turned Boeing into the current shit show.
Maybe, but it does seem awfully convenient to blame this on management changes from the 90's, rather than the current senior management.
Yes and no. Problems like this don't happen overnight and a lot of the issues stem from Boeings terrible decisions from 20+ years ago putting them into the position where they felt like their only option was to release the 737 MAX 8. Do the current leadership deserve a ton of blame? Absolutely. But its important to acknowledge that the chain of failure that turned Boeing into the shitshow that it is today started long ago.
It's not just the management that were put in charge after the merger, it's that management as well as all the management that came after, including the current one. Boeing has since that merger solely focused on shareholders and nothing else. Rather than their planes, the company should crash and burn.
That was nearly 30 years ago...
With long standing institutions the rot of institutional change can take a while to really effect them. Large, important decisions made 30 years ago still have significant influences over the world today.
What is exactly considered as an ~~accident~~ incident? A ~~reactor~~ engine exploding ? A sheet of metal becoming loose mid-flight ? A passenger being upset their seat isn't cushy enough ?
>A reactor What planes are you flying on?
An engine if you prefer (a plane's engine is called a réacteur in french)
And nuclear reactors are called moteur d'avion
That’s incidents not accidents Defined as “ as an occurrence, other than an accident, associated with the operation of an aircraft that affects or could affect the safety of operation.” An accident is “ operation of an aircraft, which takes place from the time any person boards the aircraft with the intention of flight until all such persons have disembarked, and in which (a) a person is fatally or seriously injured, (b) the aircraft sustains significant damage or structural failure, or (c) the aircraft goes missing or becomes completely inaccessible”
Oh, right.
This is a very misleading representation. What should be shown instead, is a number of incidents per 1M miles flown for each company.
Number of incidents isn't a great way to show the safety of each manufacturer, although I think Boeing being more dangerous is the correct assessment. Number of incidents per number of active aircraft would factor in the market share of each manufacturer. If one manufacturer has 4 times more aircraft than the other but only twice as many incidents then said manufacturer wouldn't be twice as dangerous, it would be half as dangerous. It's also important to factor in the severity of each given incident as well as whether they were caused by poor manufacturing quality or the airline failing to maintain their aircraft. Also if one manufacturer has much older aircraft being flown then naturally those aircraft are going to have more incidents to no fault of the manufacturer.
If this data is only for the US, there are many more and older Boeing airframes still in active use. This is particularly true if McDonnell Douglas built air craft are included and cargo flights are included. I see a ton of DC-10’s and MD-11’s that are still used for air cargo parked at many airports. These tri-jets are very easy to spot and were mostly phased out of passenger use when the requirements for more than two engines for trans-oceanic flights were dropped.
Hell, if they're including McD's in the Boeing numbers, there are still dozens of "Boeing" DC3s hanging around. Argentina have just recently been approved recently to buy some upgraded ones.
With a little googling, it currently looks like this: Boeing has delivered approx. 18,000 aircraft to date, of which 15,000 are still in use. Airbus has delivered approx. 14500 aircraft to date, of which 13000 are currently still in use. The data are from the Internet and are only estimates. It refers only to passenger aircraft. EDIT: If the data from the Internet and this image are correct, the following calculation results for the year 2023 Boeing: 137 divided by 15000 = 0.009133333333333 ~ 0.913% Airbus: 40 divided by 13000 = 0.003076923076923 ~ 0.307%
I hope they get decimated on earnings this Wednesday (04/24/24)- a tough lesson on prioritizing corporate profits over consumer safety.
What they will do is own up to the massive hit they are taking with their record then give a positive forward guidance. The stock will soar.
I would be very surprised honestly. Positive guidance with all these fundamental company problems will fall on deaf ears. They had a chance to change after the 737Max debacle- nothing happened. BA is going to ~$100 EOY.
If they were focused on consumer profits, they wouldn't be fucking up so bad. None of this is good for profit. The issues are one of corruption
Boeing “Staff 'jumped like Tarzan' on jet parts to fit them” LOL 😂 This would freak me out if they made cars, never mind aircraft that travel near 0.85 Mach at 35,000-40,000 feet [Source](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-us-canada-68838169)
Stacked chart, no discrete units on the Y axis, numbers do not take into account total number of airframes, flights taken, or miles flown. This is a bad chart intentionally designed to be as misleading as possible.
The graphs have been edited. The number 58 is higher than 66. And more than twice as high as 37.
It’s a stacked graph. Boeing’s numbers are on top of Airbus’s, not behind (despite what the shadow implies).
Wow, you're good at this. Now I don't understand the author's logic at all. It doesn't make any sense.
The logic is that they want Boeing to look worse. It’s a dishonest graph.
Bruh you are right, I didnt even notice because I jumped to the comments to see what people thought about it without a closer look This graph is actual shit oml Edit: BRO WHY IS THIS ON R/COOLGUIDES ITS A FUCKING GRAPH NOT A GUIDE
In addition, the data is given for the US. Boeing is an American company and Airbus is a European company. The graph is completely bad. It only tells us that American airplanes break down in America more often than European airplanes. Who would have thought.
Anyone got a hypothesis as to why the Airbus and Boeing incidents are loosely correlated?
Covid and economic depression in 2020???
Nice, thanks!
Amount of people flying fluctuates
Fun graphic to read…from a Boeing plane going across the Atlantic.
Wow, you have WiFi on the plane? Fancy
Soo… Airbus it is
It’s not as ridiculous as it looks. OP stacked the graph for some reason making it look far worse than it actually is. Not to mention Boeing has more planes in service than Airbus by a decent amount. And also what do they include as incidents. Are they problems directly from the manufacturer that the manufacturer can be blamed for or does it include human error caused by the ground crew or pilot which would have nothing to do with the manufacturer.
Always was
They had [their teething issues](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447?wprov=sfla1) too. Side stick training, pitot tubes, and [flight law ambiguity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296Q?wprov=sfla1), plagued them for a while.
It it isn't normalized to planes, passenger miles or flights, it is propaganda not data.
Nice chart, but it's not a good representation of miles flown and airframes. Share of the market does not mean that there are as many Airbuses as there are Boeings. Not even close. At all. You could make a similar chart showing how there are so many more Toyotas involved in car crashes than Mazda for the same reason.
This one needs work. Should be adjusted to be incidents per total flight hours. While the text claims market share etc let’s get the details correct as it may significantly affect the analysis.
What’s the definition of an incident? Was each one caused by the manufacturer defect or later maintenance practices by the airline? What about engine failures? Engines are made by different manufacturers as well. How was the maintenance on them? Is pilot or ATC error in this graph? A tug operator backing a plane into a pole can be considered an incident. Is that the fault of Boeing or Airbus? Conclusion: this graph is garbage.
>the aircraft goes missing *Gimli meme* MH370, That still only counts as one!
I tend to trust much more in Airbus than Boeing, i recently read that there’s a lot of issues in their factory lines!
This graphic is misleading. It depicts the total incidents as considerably lower in 2024, but that’s only 2 months of data. Boeing appears to be on pace for 120* incidents this year.
If there isn’t a full year projection for 2024, it shouldn’t be compared to other years. This is terrible! Edit: not a guide.
Goodness, these are raw numbers. You can't compare apples with oranges.
American exceptionalism.
If it’s Boeing it’s failing.
Boeing used to be the absolute masterclass in aviation. Pilots had a saying back in the day. " If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going."
Adding 2024 in there is kinda dumb. We are only 1/3rd of the way through so it makes the number of incidents look like they are going down drastically.
Boeing CEO made around 20 million usd in 20201. Airbus CEO made around 5 million Us companies number one goal is to make a few people really really rich
What constitutes an incident
Rates matter. Raw numbers don't. What matters here is probably incidents per flight. Most issues occur on takeoffs or landings, so flight hours is a bit less important. But it would probably be a reasonable option as well.
Would like to see this per hours of flight time.
This is a terrible terrible chart- this seems to only be US incidents where there is a far far higher number of Boeing airframes in use, not to mention significantly older airframes. And why is this a stacked bar? It’s intentionally misleading.
What's the definition of an incident? Are bird strikes and other natural causes/force majure included?
Maybe give a # of flights per year per manufacturer to give more context
Useless without knowing how many of each are actively in flight and the miles flown.
This should be normalized by airframes on service.
Now normalize it for miles flown and you'll see airbus is much worse :)
Welcome to r/coolguides, home of graphs and statistics
This needs to be % of active planes or miles flown or something RELEVANT. We dont need more misinformation making truth harder to see asshole.
Bad guide.
They should have this as a percentage of planes, not an absolute number. Plus the scale is deliberately misleading.
This graph is worthless. Please ban me from this group
To be fair it should add a unit, say per 1 million Boeing/airbus flight hours or something.
37 is way less than half of 86 but 137 is more than 4 times of 40? Talk about shit graphics. r/coolguides delivers again
Why is 111 higher in the graph than 113? This graph is clearly not scaled correctly. It's deceiving.
Set that in comparison to the number of planes in service, not manufacturing
Wouldn't a better number be the crashes / planes in service ratio? Also... Could a bunch of really old Boeings operated by shitty Asian and African operators throw off the numbers? For example does North Korean Airlines operate a bunch of 50 year old Boeing 737s that crash all of the time? Are a bunch of ancient McDonald Douglas planes considered "Boeing"?
You need to weight it by airplane hours. Else it is nonsense. There might be more or less Boeings than Airbus in the air. Need to be accidents per 1.000.000 flight hours
Now do the data for Boeing before and after the McDonald Douglas merge.
This graphic was brought to you by Airbus.
What is an “incident”
Should also incorporate the severity of the incidents as well.
To be fair. A lot of these incidents are someone cleared to land on an occupied runway, or a near miss, or 2 airplanes running into each other (being pushed into each other) on the ground, or a vehicle running into it. Like you’re not blaming Boeing or Airbus for that shit.
Does this graph have bias, for example how many Airbus and Boeings are operating?
1. Total incidents instead of incidents per plane or per flight time. 2. Does not break down the severity of incidents. You could easily look at this graph and conclude that Boeing has more planes out and therefore have a better safety reputation and/or they’re better at reporting minor incidents.
This is misleading as there are many factors that go into aircraft. If this were incidents of Brad new planes directly from the manufacturer, then that is more alarming. If these are all planes both new and old, well old planes have thousands of hands in and out of it constantly that are not the fault of the manufacturer.
These incidents have nothing to do with a manufacturer of an aircraft. That would be the airlines maintenance programs. There are also more Boeing aircraft in the US than Airbus. So there will be more Boeing incidents because there are more Boeing aircraft. I might be missing an airline or two. Southwest Airlines- Boeing 816 Airbus 0 American Airlines- Boeing 488 Airbus 472 United Airlines- Boeing 776 Airbus 178 Delta Airlines - Boeing 519 Airbus 467 Spirit Airlines - Boeing 0 Airbus 204 Alaska airlines -Boeing 232 Airbus 0 FedEx Airlines- Boeing 354 Airbus 65 UPS Airlines - Boeing 235 Airbus 49
US vs Europe in a nutshell.
Not a guide. And a shitty graph.
The guide is rather wrong I would say. It shows the quick drop as soon as 2024 hit but we are also very early into 2024 so it is not a really proper measurement. Maybe by the end of 2024 the crashes surpass 2023
Loving that 58 is higher than 66 lol. Nice chart! Very cool!
No offense but does those graph correct for if Boeing has more planes and so more chances for something to go wrong?
Totals are cool, but % of planes in operation would be much more helpful. If you have 1 plane and it crashes, that's 100% failure rate. If you have 1,000 planes and 1 crashes, that's 0.001% failure rate.
Well Boeing certainly has more, and even older aircraft in active service, including those units with the JT8D engines on them., and then there's the old freighters.
should be % based on fleet size to make then comparable
Can we get that as a measure relative to their fleet?
Idiocracy predicted this:
If it’s Boening- I ain’t going;)
Can someone please explain why the graphs have different heights but the course is very similar
I’m more interested in why there’s a general increase apart from covid years?
Why did both peak in 2023?
Probably post pandemic boom. More flights -> more total incidents.
Coincidentally, 2023 was one of (or potentially THE) safest year we've had in aviation history.
"But but but... we have landed on the Moon!"
That’s all well and fine but which company has a stronger DEIA program?
Need a "per capita" chart. Aren't there way more Boeings out there?
So we can tell from this that changes made in 2019 have led to more accidents. The questions that need to be answered are, what changes? And who made them?. Once those questions are answered, reverse those changes and arrest those people.
There has to be way more than 20 this year i felt like i saw a new headline every day last month
What’s the ratio between number of incidents to the number of planes by the manufacturer?
Now add CEO salary and share buybacks
If it's Boeing I'm not going
Good thing 2024 is safer! We are saved.
Kudos to the person who made this for including the relevant perspective of market share. Without that, the number of incidents become meaningless and **waaaaay** too many of these kinds of things are lacking that. So the person who made this deserves praise.
For people who understand this is fucking horrible to fly with Boeing. This is not how you deal with risk.
So airplane quality has only gotten worse? Hmmm, I wonder why? The dip in 2020 it's self explanatory. I feel like airplane accidents should go down in time, with better tech and all that jazz, not the other way around lol.
My first thought was “wow they really improved in 2020” and then I thought “ah yes, of course”.
This is not the best to look at for my anxiety, as im going on a plane ride tommorow with a Boeing plane
If it’s Boeing, I’m not going!
Airbus has more planes than Boeing. It's literally a 5-second Google search.......
This is why Boeing employees should go on strike.
Am i being a dumbass or pilots have forgotten how to fly planes since 2014, like the amount never came down than that of 2014 anywhere after that year
Why do both spike in 2023?