The Airbus A320 model was involved in two recent, high-profile crashes.
The Germanwings flight that crashed in the French Alps on Tuesday was an Airbus A320, as was the AirAsia plane that crashed in late December—albeit a different variation.
The Germanwings plane was an A320-211. There were 150 people on board the plane when it went down. AirAsia Flight QZ8501 went missing over the Java Sea between Surabaya and Singapore, killing all 162 people on board, on Dec. 24, 2014. That model was an A320-216.
The A320 is a family of medium-range, narrow-body commercial airliners that includes the A318, A319, A320 and A321.
Airbus has said the entire A320 fleet has accumulated a total of 150 million flight hours in 85 million flights, meaning they’re one of the most popular passenger jets in the world, comparable to the Boeing 737. A total of 6,415 of the A320 airliners have been produced. Around 8,400 Boeing 737s have been produced.
“The A320 has a fantastic safety record,” Phil Seymour, the head of the International Bureau of Aviation, told CNN. “There have been a couple of incidents, but generally speaking, they’re safer than most aircraft out there now.”
Seymour noted that the 24-year-old plane would have been close to the final years of its life, but it would not impact the safety.
