Aircraft/Boeing
Is the Boeing 757-200 safe?
The honest safety record for the Boeing 757-200, straight from the accident data. Context, not spin.
Informational only. Not safety, operational, or travel advice. These are estimates from public records, provided as-is; see our terms & disclaimer.
0.21
modelled fatal rate / million flights
27.0M
flights flown since 1983
6 / 8
fatal accidents / hull losses on record
The rate is the model's shrinkage-adjusted estimate, the same figure used in a flight's score, not a raw count ÷ flights ratio. See the methodology.
Specifications
What the record shows
The 757-200 entered service in 1983 and is still in wide use, now mostly as a freighter and on transatlantic routes. Six fatal accidents are recorded across roughly 27 million departures, five of them before 2003, and the causes were blocked airspeed sensors, navigation error, a runway excursion in a thunderstorm and a mid-air collision attributed to air traffic control failures rather than to the airframe. There has been no fatal 757-200 accident since 2018 and no hull loss of any kind since 2023.
Engine programme: Anchored to Boeing's Statistical Summary (April 2026, data through 2025), page 12: the 757 family shows 8 hull losses at a hull-loss rate of 0.28 per million departures, implying 8 / 0.28 = 28.6 million family departures through 2025. Cross-check on the fatal line: 6 hull losses with fatalities / 0.21 per million = 28.6 million, identical. Adding Jan to Jul 2026 (about 436 active aircraft x roughl EXCLUSIONS: EXCLUDED under the deliberate-act policy: (1) American Airlines Flight 77, 757-223 N644AA, hijacked and flown into the Pentagon on 11 Sep 2001, 64 occupants killed. (2) United Airlines Flight 93, 757-222 N591UA, hijacked and crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania on 11 Sep 2001, 44 occupants killed. Both were deliberate acts, not airframe or operational failures. (3) CAAC Flight 3523, 757-21B B-28
Who flies the Boeing 757-200, and how old theirs are
Counted from individual airframes in our registry, with build years from public registries and sourced references. An age appears only where we can date at least three of that airline's Boeing 757-200 aircraft; otherwise we say so rather than estimate.
| Airline | In our registry | Average age |
|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 7 | 35.9 yrs |
| United Airlines | 6 | 32 yrs |
| Ethiopian Airlines Cargo | 3 | 31.7 yrs |
| American Airlines | 2 | not enough dated |