Which aircraft type is least likely to catch fire?

petakas wrote:

What is a wet and what a dry tank ?

A wet tank is a fuel tank that uses the actual skin of the airplane, a dry tank is a separate tank inside the wing or fuselage, just like a car.

Seems to be a confusion between tanks and wings here

LeSving wrote:

Seems to be a confusion between tanks and wings here

Let those who are confused, be confused. We know what we meant ;)

Seems silly to design that way. Why not use the stiffness of that aluminum tank as a structural part? Now, you just added extra weight, but no stiffness.

So that in a crash the tank doesn’t rupture and catch fire. No diamond plane has caught fire so far in a crash. A lot of the features developed by diamond and not visible at first glance are for crash resistance.

AdamFrisch wrote:

Seems silly to design that way. Why not use the stiffness of that aluminum tank as a structural part? Now, you just added extra weight, but no stiffness.

Absolutely. Stiffness is not a desirable future for a fuel container. What you want is the ability to keep fuel protected when the structure breaks. Flexibility. These small interconnected fuel cells do the trick.
And Diamond also use metal mesh shielded fuel hoses throughout. Very heavy… and very wise in my opinion.
If Cirrus would copy that there would be less of them turning into a fireball after a landing or go-around mishap. Seriously…
I flew DA40’s for 10 years and this was one of my key buying criteria. Diamonds won’t incinerate you if you make a mistake and this was worth all of the weight penalty to me.
And back to the original question: obviously a diesel-powered DA40 has all of the boxes ticked to win first place I suppose. Preferably the ones with the lighter engine (Continental) that are much better balanced and therefore safer.

What about a diesel Cessna, 172 with a Continental or 182 with the SMA? Metal airframe and diesel/jet fuel.

I guess Diamond indeed does a good job of providing passive safety in its designs and active safety as well; docile handling that prevents getting into problems in the first place. A Cirrus has wet wings that make the ignition risk higher on hard impact, but isn’t the whole point of the parachute to prevent such impacts? Don’t know the statistics on burned Cirri but they may actually be quite low.