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Airbus A350: The Modern Jetliner That Sacrificed Itself To Save Every Soul Aboard
We’re often told that aviation is safer nowadays than any other form of motorized transportation. In no uncertain terms, you’re more likely to harm yourself buckled into a passenger car than you are strapped into a passenger airliner. It might be easy to pass this off as hyperbole, nothing more than a successful PR campaign like so many bold claims of history. But as a genuine, real-world testament about the safety of modern airliners, the Airbus A350 just delivered an impact statement.
At least, that’s a common sentiment after a Japan Airlines A350 collided with a Japanese Coast Guard De Havilland Canada Dash 8 utility plane after landing at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport the day following New Year’s Day 2024. Though five crew aboard the Dash 8 lost their lives, not a single soul aboard Japan Airlines Flight 516, including 12 crew and 367 passengers, was killed. Even as a post-crash fire threatened all onboard Flight 516, the A350’s suite of modern safety features warded off the worst effects of the spreading blaze long enough for first responders to save all aboard.
In many ways, the chain of events that transpired during that fateful accident began with decades of advancements in aeronautical safety, thanks in no small part to the work at Airbus. Since the first Airbus passenger airliner, the wide-body, twin-jet A300, entered service in 1974, Airbus has embarked on a quest to fill every conceivable sector of the civil airliner space. The core nucleus of this Airbus aircraft fleet is primarily developed directly from the A300, or at least with its design principles at heart.
Throughout it all, an emphasis on increased safety was a guiding design principle. One such development of the
