Hi Steve
I've only ever heard the claim that Quantas has never suffered a fatal accident involving a jet airliner. I actually don't know if that's true or not.
Cheers
Steve
In Aus Qantas promote the film
Rainman heavily (seems to repeat on the idiot box every few months) because Raymond says Qantas is the only airline that has never had an accident. It is also promoted in Australia as
based on a true story but if you go to
https://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety...ticles/rain-man-the-movie-rain-man-real-life/ you find it is a mish-mash of characters and that two of the main characters it is based on (Peek and Sullivan) actually lived with their parents, not in an institution.
To quote
One was Kim Peek (described elsewhere on this website). Another was an autistic savant and his brother (just as in the movie) who prefer to remain anonymous. He spent a great deal of time with them in their typical family activities. The other autistic savant Dustin Hoffman got to know well was Joseph Sullivan, who lives in Huntington, West Virginia along with his parents, Drs. Ruth and William Sullivan.
The other savant Hoffman studied also appears to have had full family support. Kim Peek died recently but Joseph Sullivan is still alive and has a job because of his mother's efforts to set up a system of services not only for her son, but for many others like him, through the Autism Services Center she has established in Huntington, West Virginia.
If you talk to Qantas staff all will tell you
Qantas has never had an accident because that is the company mantra that they have drummed into them
. In my work (Air Safety) I routinely blow that myth away and always emphasise that the biggest single cause of accidents is complacency. Qantas has had many accidents recently and yet still insists on calling all their accidents "incidents", even the Bangkok one, and repeating the errors that lead to recent accidents.
If you fly commercial you will know that most airlines tell pax sitting next to exits how to operate them and that the most important thing before opening an exit is to ensure there is no fire or other hazard that will make the slide unsafe. Qantas insist that only crew can open exits and that the Captain must initiate any evacuation even thought the captain is usually the first killed in an accident. Read the Flight Safety Foundation report into the Qantas accident at Bangkok for a summary of the full scary story. Most airlines insist that in the case of an accident all pax must be evacuated within 90 seconds of engine shutdown in case of fire. Qantas waited 14 minutes before evacuation commenced and it took them 7 minutes to do the evacuation.
Here is an escape slide deployed by Qantas
cabin crew at Bangkok
The accident itself was almost a rerun of their first jet accident - the 707 at Singapore in the early 60's.
In both cases the aircraft was beyond economic repair but they rebuilt them so they did not have to admit to a hull loss.
