Airtran flies singificantly fewer flights than do the Major airlines. That's why accident rates are expressed in accidents per 100,000 departures, miles, or hours. The largest airlines fly as many departures in a day as a small airline might fly in several months so they have significantly more exposure to having an accident.

The problem with valujet/airtran is not just their accident and incident rates, which are many times that of the rest of the industry, but it's what is causing these accidents and incidents. Especially enlightening is reading the reports of the many incidents (less serious than accidents) and some of the very poor decisions that have been made by valujet/airtran crews and managers.

Go to http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/query.asp#query_start and search from 1/1/94 through the present for model "DC-9". 11 out of 63 of the DC9 incidents and accidents during that period were valujet/airtran. American Airlines, who flies a much larger fleet of DC9s (roughly 260 DC9-80s during that preiod) has only only 5 incidents/accidents. AAL flew probably 8 or 10 times as many flights in their DC9 fleet during that time period yet had less than half of the accidents/incidents.

Read through some of the reports.