What do you mean by "crash"? There are crashes, and there are crashes. CFIT (controlled flight into terrain) is very different from a forced landing, a precautionary landing, a ditching at sea, a groundloop during take-off, landing short, landing long, etc.<br><br>When I was stationed at CFB Shearwater, Nova Scotia, I was in the Ops Centre when a Sea King helicopter flying a naval patrol sent in a "Pan Pan" which shortly thereafter escalated into a "Mayday". They were having engine problems and the pilot elected to make a controlled ditching at sea. Everyone on board was rescued without (much) incident.<br><br>On the other hand, a helicopter that strikes a high-tension line 100 feet in the air and gets the wire tangled in its rotors is toast.<br><br>Deciding whether fixed-wing is safer than whirly-wing is like arguing whether single-engine is safer than twin-engine. Single-engine advocates point out that engine failure in a twin is twice as likely, and point to the number of accidents where twin-engines have crashed after losing one engine. A crash due to engine-out in a twin is more likely to result in a stall-spin (where the airplane "corkscrews" in), rather than a forced landing. (where the pilot makes a controlled landing without power). But Twin-engine advocates point out that most engine failures in a twin don't result in crashes at all, and so don't show up in the statistics.<br><br>Similarly, there are situations where a helicopter will be much safer to fly than a fixed wind aircraft. A helicopter that encounters deteriorating weather will often be able to land in a nearby clearing and wait it out; a fixed-wing aircraft will usually have to keep flying until the pilot can find an airport (or at least a large open field). Similarly, a heli that loses an engine at altitude can autorotate safely into any decent-sized clearing; a fixed-wing can glide, but may well shear off the undercarriage, hit a ditch, or run into the trees at the far end.<br><br>IMO, there are far too many variables to determine which is "safer".<br><br>Earth Wolf - 200 hour Private Pilot (fixed-wing, single-engine, land); professional mathematician with a little training in statistics.<br><br>