What percentage of airplanes are involved in a crash in their lifetime?
I just ran some numbers based on Wikipedia statistics. I don't know how they define &quot;incident or accident&quot; but hull loss is pretty straightforward. That means it was written off.




Aircraft type
Total made
Incidents/accidents
Hull losses




DC-10
368
55 (14.2%)
32 (8.3%)


L-1011
250
32 (12.8%)
11 (4.4%)


727
1832
336 (18.3%)
118 (6.4%)


737
8725
368 (4.3%)
184 (2.1%)


747
1514
131 (8.6%)
60 (4%)




All of these were introduced in the late 1960's. As you can see, the DC-10, L-1011, and 727, which are mostly retired, have pretty bad numbers. But the aircraft that are still being made and flown have much better stats. I think this is probably due to the fact that air travel gets safer all the time. The planes that had their heyday in the 70's and 80's fared poorly but the longer they continue to be produced, the less likely they are to crash.