Compare two commercial aircraft families side by side — entry-into-service specs and recorded safety history, juxtaposed calmly rather than ranked. Below is a default comparison of the two most widely flown narrowbodies; use the interactive picker to compare any of the commercial families we track.
Boeing 737 vs Airbus A320
Raw historical counts, not accident rates — a larger or older fleet naturally has more. This is not a safety ranking.
Boeing 737 (all variants)
Identity
- Manufacturer
- Boeing
- Typical seats
- 85-230 pax
- Range
- 6,570 km
- First flight
- 1967-04
Safety
- Occurrences, last 5 years
- 622
- Airworthiness directives
- 343
- Recorded occurrences
- 2,823
- Hull losses
- 286
- Fatal accidents
- 164
- Total fatalities
- 9,128
- Records span
- 1968–2026
- Fatal accidents per 1M US departures
- 0.037 (2016–2025, US flights)
Rates use U.S. DOT T-100 volumes and cover US-touching flights only; carriers and aircraft without sufficient US volume show absolute counts only.
Airbus A320 (all variants)
Identity
- Manufacturer
- Airbus
- Typical seats
- 140-180 pax
- Range
- 6,300 km
- First flight
- 1987-02
Safety
- Occurrences, last 5 years
- 198
- Airworthiness directives
- 873
- Recorded occurrences
- 802
- Hull losses
- 53
- Fatal accidents
- 28
- Total fatalities
- 1,945
- Records span
- 1988–2026
- Fatal accidents per 1M US departures
- 0.000 (2016–2025, US flights)
Rates use U.S. DOT T-100 volumes and cover US-touching flights only; carriers and aircraft without sufficient US volume show absolute counts only.