Turkish Airlines: 21 accidents in 25 years

Thanks for this background piece!

Very good post. It seems Turkish airlines have a history of such accident.

Great story.  I will be looking our for more on this one!

But... how does this compare to other airlines? From the article, I assume it's worse, but accoding to www.airdisaster.com Aeroflot have crashed more than 80 planes in the same timeframe (It's safe to assume thay've also been flying a lot more planes that Turkish airlines).

Maybe a "fatalities per passenger miles" chart with the different airlines would be an interesting story?

I agree with refrodmiel, but as I understand there is no standard way of measuring aviation accidents.

So I thought I'd help us out with some research. Here are the top 10 airlines in terms of fatal accident events (where one or more person dies) since 1970 according to www.airsafe.com. Sources of data include Flight International, Conde Nast Traveler, the New York Times, ICAO, and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.

Former Soviet Union - 28
Other PRC Airlines - 18
American Airlines - 13
Indian Airlines - 12
United Airlines - 11
China Airlines (Taiwan) - 10
Turkish Airlines - 10
Garuda Indonesia Airways - 9
US Airways - 9
Cubana - 8

More interesting, here are the details according to the estimated Fatal Event Rate - this is reached by dividing the Full Loss Equivalent (sum of the proportions of passengers killed for each fatal event) by the estimated number of flights. Again this data has been collected from 1970 onwards, but bear in mind it isn't as complete as I'd like because there is not always data for the estimated number of flights.

Cubana - 18.53
Air Zimbabwe - 11.54
AeroPeru - 9.74
Royal Jordanian - 7.99
EgyptAir/Air Sinai - 7.6
China Airlines (Taiwan) - 7.16
TAM (Brazil) - 5.68
Air India - 4.89
Pakistan International Airlines - 4.55
Turkish Airlines - 3.6

So I think we can probably say according to this data, Turkish Airlines are within the top ten most accident-prone carriers.

I still have the spreadsheet if anyone is interested.

i just couldn't get the comments.. its seems like a conspiracy against THY..the statistics you have made doesn not show the real facts, if you wanna trust on a statistics, it must be for sure that all the accidenst should have happened under the same circumstances, no way, it can't be said, so instead of trying to understand the reason of the accidents and be sorry for the dead ones, you prefer to blacken THY, not fair my friends, not fair...

Shila - this is not intended as an attack against Turkish Airlines, these are the statistics from an independent website which collects data from a number of sources. I'm not trying to blacken anybody's name, just look at safety performance of all airlines in comparison. I'd be more than happy to look at statistics of non-fatal accidents, and of course no accident is quite the same. But if I were selecting an airline to fly on, I wouldn't care whether it had been involved in an accident previously, neither would I care what kind of accident it was, or from which country the airline was based in. But I would care if the airline was persistently involved in incidents. Did you know certain airlines are actually banned from flying over European airspace because of a persistently bad safety record?

On March 3, 1974, a DC-10 of THY crashed during take off at Paris-Orly Airport, and 346 people on board lost their lives.  The cause of the accident was that the cargo door blew open shortly after take off.  Investigations concluded that firstly the cargo door was not properly latched by the baggage handler, secondly even though it was known by McDonnell Douglas that this latching system did not function properly and was supposed to have been modified, it was not, but the THY plane had been allowed to leave the assembly line with a report carrying the signature of three inspectors that the modification had been carried out indicating either fraud or oversight.  At that time the problem regarding the latching system was also already known by the FAA, which also had not taken the proper actions that could have prevented such similar unfortunate accidents.  Yes, a THY plane crashed in France and 346 people lost their lives, which is included in the total loss of 844 lives in the statistics.  Yes, a THY plane crashed in Holland and nine people lost their lives.  Who was to blame then, not as much THY as statistics without detail can suggest, and what has been the cause and conclusions of the recent accident, without knowing the full details yet?  For one thing the Turkish pilot must be considered a hero for getting his plane down on land so successfully with minimum loss of lives, no less than another hero who landed his plane on the Hudson river.

Hi guys, 

Just finishing my statistic class assignments, I must agree with Sheila and IBCetinka. It is unfortunate that so many people died on THY accidents, correct. However w/o the following information we cannot conclude for sure that THY is not a secure air carrier:

- cause of the accidents (both causation and correlation)

- Miles flown by each airline

- Fatalities/accident/mile

Also, Turkish Airlines is a member of SkyTeam which requires compliance to strict safety regulations.

I think that the pilots might have indeed been heros, investigation only will show.

In the meantime, we shall keep an open mind w/o undermining our choices of preferred air carriers.

Thanks

Guys,

Claiming Turkish Airlines is unsafe based on these manipulated facts are ridiculous. The accident that happened in France (resulting in the deaths in 346 people) and this latest accident in Amsterdam is mainly due to technical problems with the aircraft's systems -- that is beyond the control of Turkish maintenance officers. Please do not forget that just one day after the accident, Boeing published an advisory note worldwide that its 737-800 aircrafts might have an innate altimeter malfunction below 2,000 ft. 

Turkish Airlines is an awesome airline - it has made great progress so far. Don't let a few European newspapers discourage you from flying it. They are probably worried that Turkish Airlines, the second fastest growing airline in Europe, will grab market share from their national airlines.  

jizzyzazzy, 

americans should probably start servicing their plans even more because two of them crashed just a month before the Turkish Airlines crash. 

and so should the french (because AF A340 crashed in Toronto a few years ago, and don't forget about the Concorde)

and so should the British (their B777 crash landed short of the runway)

and so should the Brazilians, Armenians, Greeks and everyone else in the world. please think a little bit before you make generalized statements.

i think planes, cars, busses, even bicycles might crash...best way of traveling is walking.... statistics shows that possibilty that someone brake his leg while walking is 0.00067 %

aint turks carry some chips on their shoulders? gee cool down guys this is not a platfrom to defend a country, their laid back pilots. we are talking about air safety and i agree with torinolu saban. walking is awesome tho we just believe in Jesus we are not Jesus' lmao! how am I gonna walk atlantic ocean dude!