How many Boeing 737s have crashed?

Short answer

There is no simple figure because "737" covers very different generations built since 1967. The best-known episode is the two 737 MAX accidents — Lion Air in October 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines in March 2019 — with 346 fatalities combined, which led to the worldwide grounding of the entire model for nearly two years.

Published: September 22, 2026 · Updated: September 22, 2026 · Edited by Above Ten Thousand · Editorial policy

Gear Actuation Boeing 737-800 EL AL approaching VIE DSC 3259wPeter Haas (CC BY SA), vía commons

Two accidents that defined a crisis

The 737 MAX, the latest generation of this family, suffered two fatal accidents within just five months: Lion Air flight 610, which crashed into the Java Sea on October 29, 2018, shortly after taking off from Jakarta, killing 189 people, and Ethiopian Airlines flight 302, which crashed near Addis Ababa on March 10, 2019, killing 157 people — 346 fatalities between the two accidents. Investigations pointed to a shared fault: the MCAS flight control system, which automatically pushed the aircraft's nose down based on data from a single angle-of-attack sensor, without pilots being able to identify in time why the aircraft was resisting climbing.

An unprecedented grounding

After the second accident, aviation authorities worldwide, including the US FAA, ordered the total grounding of the 737 MAX fleet, which lasted nearly two years, from March 2019 to late 2020. Boeing had to redesign the MCAS software, add specific pilot training and submit the aircraft to a new certification process before it could fly with passengers again.

Why there isn't a single figure for "the 737"

Talking about how many 737s have crashed without further nuance mixes very different generations: the original from the sixties, the Classic from the eighties, the Next Generation from the nineties and the current MAX, each with its own safety record and decades of difference in avionics and regulations. Air safety agencies publish accidents by specific model and registration, not as a cumulative sum of "all 737s" that would poorly represent the actual risk of flying in this family today.