Is an Old Plane an Unsafe Plane?
Jennifer Billock May 22, 2018
Don’t let the in-seat ashtrays and delightfully tacky retro decorations on some airplanes scare you – just because a plane is older, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s any less safe than the more modern planes flying around the world today.
We all know the sinking feeling of stepping onto an aircraft that looks like it flew right out of the 1950s and landed in 2018. In-seat ashtrays, stunningly retro upholstery, and worst: no wi-fi! We’ve also all felt that same fear of wondering if a plane of an accelerated age maybe won’t make it to the final destination. Aren’t those older planes unsafe?
Well, no, they’re not. Just because a plane is older (like the one that recently crashed in Cuba which is now being scrutinized for age), that doesn’t mean the plane is any less safe. Theoretically, planes can fly forever, as long as they’re properly maintained and cared for, with the appropriate inspections done as needed.
Author and pilot Daniel Morley pointed to his own life to prove that point: “Even in my own experience, older aircraft are safe to operate,” he wrote for AirlineGeeks. “While earning my seaplane rating in Florida, the training and checkride was carried out in an aircraft built in 1958. At 60 years old the aircraft was perfectly safe to fly and is current with its inspections and had been routinely maintained by its owner. The operator also had other aircraft in their fleet that had been built in the 1940s.”
Indeed, American aircraft are regularly more than 20 years old and flying perfectly fine – and in some arctic parts of Canada, some carriers are still flying with planes that stopped being produced in 1942, and with no fatalities in the entire history of usage.
[Photo: Shutterstock]
The bad part is that they have the same seat paddIng.
Tinkicker those technologies can be put on an old plane. Did you think they're not doing zGPS approaches in old aircraft?
Um it’s a nice article but newer airliners are safer than older. Look at the changing accident rates and the fleet profiles / certification standards. the rules that apply today are written based on yesterday’s dead, and if you are flying a 737-200 you’re in ancient technology designed and certified before many of those rules applied. Finding truly reliable sources for rates per million flights is tricky, but suggest a new 737 is at least an order of magnitude less likely to be in a fatal accident than a -100/200.
Anyone remember N136-PB? The Provincetown-Boston Airlines DC-3 that was the highest time airliner in the world back in the 1980's when we took it from Logan to P'town. It was fifty years old then and had 90,000 hours of flight time on it then. Well, it's still around, and there's a pic of it all polished and shiny, on a taxiway at YYJ, taken in 2016. The bet here is that far less than 10% of the plane is original parts. Far less. It was safe when we flew in it, and it's safe today.
As Indiana Jones says, "It's not the years - it's the mileage."