Midtown Blogger/Manhattan Valley Follies: Die Welt- How Safe Are Old Planes?

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Die Welt- How Safe Are Old Planes?

Who closes only on the basis of aircraft age on the safety of an airline that is wrong. For experts are rather the education and training of pilots and aircraft maintenance and inspection of the most important safety criteria for risk-free flying.

Basically an older airplane must not be unsafe, says a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Investigation (BFU) in Braunschweig. The Authority decreed on Tuesday afternoon still no details on the possible cause of the crash of the German Wings Airbus flight 4U 9525 from Barcelona to Dusseldorf. There were three staff immediately sent to the accident site.

"More important than the aircraft age, the maintenance and inspections," says the BFU spokesman. Almost identical expresses itself the insurance company Munich Re: "The risk assessment is not age in the foreground, but all safety standards, maintenance and inspections."

Absturzjet 24 years and four months old

The machine crashed Airbus A320 is probably one of the oldest aircraft in the entire fleet of the Lufthansa group with the daughter of German Wings. First, the model flew with Lufthansa itself - early 2014, it was then to daughter German Wings passed.

The elderly model includes a total of the oldest aircraft in this series. The aircraft had its first flight in November 1990, ie 24 years and four months old. With the serial number 147, the aircraft is one of the first built models of the A320 aircraft family.

Of this type, which will be delivered in 1987, over 6300 machines have been delivered to date worldwide. The A320 is the most produced aircraft from Airbus.

Computationally off or lands every two seconds worldwide aircraft from the A320 family. The aircraft is considered very safe.Since its launching almost 30 years ago, there were only 23 major accidents.

Emirates Fleet half his age at Lufthansa

Although the Lufthansa Group writes in the annual report that a major competitive factor is the age of the fleet - but the average age of its fleet with 615 aircraft in 2014 increased slightly from 11.2 to 11.5 years.

By comparison, the major competitor Emirates, the average aircraft age is 6.2 years. The Emirates machines are so constructed in about half the age of the fleet of the Lufthansa Group. The age of the fleet at the low cost airline Ryanair is only 5.5 years old - and the trend is decreasing.

Older aircraft like if well maintained, according to experts, although have no greater risk - but newer models have a total of more modern technology. You have therefore usually also a more advanced security technology and are especially economical to operate.

Military aircraft are significantly older

There is a global trend to that new rapidly expanding low cost airlines operate frequently very modern fleets. Airbus and Boeing Hundreds ordered new machines.The established airlines such as Lufthansa, however, have tended to be slightly older models in its portfolio, which must then be renewed with billions effort. So Condor, Lufthansa and German Wings are among the airlines with older fleets.

But that's still relatively young by international standards. In the Ukrainian airline UM Air, the average age of the fleet is over 24 years, as with the Thai airline Orient Thai Airlines. In India there are airlines with an average age of over 20 years, however, new vendors who come just two to four years.

The oldest major aircraft fleets do not exist in the civil aviation sector, but with the military for the rest. To fly the US armed forces large tankers that are 50 or 60 years old. The B-52 bombers of the United States, for example, about 50 years old. The models are always carefully maintained, and with effort billion new technology will be upgraded.