Fire departments responded to 194k vehicle fires per year in the US, across 254M vehicles. That's one serious fire every 1310 car-years. Thus, 787s catch fire 40 times more often than cars.
Just to add to this - I have been involved in 2x car fires. 1 had the fire brigade involved (car completely burnt out), the other 1 we dealt with and all was well (welding some rust at a friends and the boot/trunk caught fire). I image there aren't many plane fires where authorities aren't notified, but this is a guess. Does anyone have any knowledge of aircraft incident reporting rates?
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Fire departments responded to 194k vehicle fires per year in the US, across 254M vehicles. That's one serious fire every 1310 car-years. Thus, 787s catch fire 40 times more often than cars.
[refs] http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v13i11.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_Unit...
Just to add to this - I have been involved in 2x car fires. 1 had the fire brigade involved (car completely burnt out), the other 1 we dealt with and all was well (welding some rust at a friends and the boot/trunk caught fire). I image there aren't many plane fires where authorities aren't notified, but this is a guess. Does anyone have any knowledge of aircraft incident reporting rates?