Boeing 737-800 jet has good safety record, but crashed a few times. Full list

A Boeing Co. 737-800 NG aircraft of the China Eastern Airlines Corp. involved in a crash on Monday while carrying 132 people is considered one of the safest aircraft ever made.

The six-year-old single-aisle jet is part of the NG, or Next Generation, era that preceded the 737 Max, which was subjected to a global grounding after two deadly crashes. 

“The 737 NG has been in operation for 25 years and has an excellent safety record,” said Paul Hayes, director of air safety and insurance at aviation consultancy Cirium. “I’m not going to speculate on what happened but if the Flightfadar24 logs are accurate, something seems to have happened abruptly and the plane nose-dived from cruising altitude.”

The jet involved in the China Eastern accident, en route from the southwestern city of Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, to Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, was six years old, according to Flightradar24.

In the United States, American Airlines has the most 737-800s in operation with 265 followed by Southwest Airlines with 205 and United Airlines with 136.

The NG has one of the best safety records among all aircraft, with just 11 fatal accidents out of more than 7,000 planes delivered since 1997, according to Cirium.

Here is a list of some of the deadliest crashes in Boeing’s 737- 800 aircraft:

Air India flight: August 2020

The last fatal 737-800 crash occurred in August 2020 when an Air India Express plane overshot the table-top runway and crashed while landing at Calicut International Airport in the southern state of Kerala in heavy rain, killing 21. A government report cited pilot error as the probable cause.

Iran missile attack on Ukraine International Airlines: January 2020

The flight was flying from Iran’s capital Tehran to Ukraine’s capital Kyiv. As many as 176 passengers, including the crew, were on board. It was shot down minutes after takeoff from the Tehran International Airport, by an Iranian surface-to-air missile.

None of the passengers survived. 

Flydubai Flight 981: March 2016

The flight crashed during an aborted landing. Sixty-two people, including seven crew members, were on board.

Air India flight: May 2010

The flight was coming from Dubai with 166 people, including six crew members. All crew members and 152 passengers were killed and only eight passengers survived.

Preliminary findings suggested that the pilot landed the aircraft far beyond the touchdown point in the Mangalore airport.

China's airline safety record has been among the best in the world for a decade but is less transparent than in countries like the United States and Australia where regulators release detailed reports on non-fatal incidents.

According to Aviation Safety Network, China's last fatal jet accident was in 2010, when 44 of 96 people on board were killed when an Embraer E-190 regional jet flown by Henan Airlines crashed on approach to Yichun airport.