How safe is the Airbus A320?
26.03.2015 23:47
Aviation experts today reassured travellers that the A320 is still one of the safest planes in the world despite a crash in the French Alps which claimed 150 lives.
As emergency crews worked to retrieve wreckage from the site near Digne-les-Bains, in France, theories continued to circulate about what caused Germanwings Flight 4U 9525 to fall from the skies.
There has been some speculation about the track record of the model which experts were quick to quash.
Paul Hayes, safety director at aviation consultancy Ascend, said: 'The A320 family has a very good safety record considering that there is a fleet of 6,000 aircraft out there.'
Safety experts said it was too early to speculate on the case of the crash, but noted that accidents during the cruise phase of the flight are rare, even though this comes less than three months after the AirAsia disaster.
'We have had a couple of events recently but in general jetliners don't crash during the cruise,' said Hayes.
Patrick Smith, an airline pilot and author of best-selling book Cockpit Confidential, allayed any fears the accident was purely down to the aircraft model.
'The A320 is a very sophisticated and popular model,' Smith told MailOnline Travel.
'I am not seeing anything in this accident that encourages me to think it is specific to that model. All Airbus models are designed similarly, and the
A320 is the blueprint for other variations such as the A319 and the A321.
'I don't like the idea of blaming these accidents on specific models; this question is asked all the time, and all it does it leads to aircraft being compared with other aircraft.
'Crashes are so rare, and so comparing them considering the type of model is statistically hair-splitting.
'What you will also see is there is lots of discussion, and sadly lots of misunderstanding concerning how computers and how pilots 'fly' the plane.
'Usually in these cases, there isn't a single case, and it is a chain of events that can lead to something like this happening.'
(dailymail.co.uk)
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