Originally Posted by Adlerdriver

You left off the most telling of the major European accidents in the last decade, AF 447. It takes a special kind of "child of magenta" and automation cripple to spend their last minutes on the planet with a full aft stick input somehow hoping things are going to improve.

That said, I'm not on board with the assertion that airmanship is somehow superior on our side of that Atlantic. But your conclusion that the seemingly higher number of accidents here indicates the 20 year safety record in Europe is superior to the US is flawed.

If you're going to attempt a comparison between US and European airlines safety records, you really need to account for the scale of the operations. Compare apples to apples accounting for daily numbers of flights and I don't think the picture is quite the same as you think.

British Airways, Lufthansa and Air France combined don't operate the same number of aircraft as either Delta or American. Combine the fleets of AA, Delta and United (almost 2600 aircraft) and you have about 3.5 times the number of aircraft (770) operated by those three Euro airlines.

Factor in other smaller Euro airlines like Iberia, Alitalia, Swissair, KLM, etc and they're still eclipsed by the additional 1200+ aircraft operated by SWA, JB, Spirit and Alaska and the 600+ combined aircraft at Fedex and UPS. Compare the operations of US regional carriers with similar operations in Europe and the disparity continues.

Considering the number of daily flight evolutions, it stands to reason that US airline's exposure to potential accidents will be higher just based on pure volume. So, it's hardly a valid comparison to simply list off a lesser number of major accidents involving European airlines during a given period in comparison with the US.