The 747 without fuel tank inerting is still has a very good safety record. It's been over 20 years since one has had a fuel tank explosion. FAA estimates are without inserting a passenger jet risks a fuel tank explosion every 60M hours, or roughly every 30,000 years. Lastly, it's unclear how well the FAA inerting requirements will even work, they only reduce oxygen levels to 12%, while military jets require 9% to eliminate explosion risks.
It's silly to spend a large amount of money to retrofit planes near the end of their useful lives with safety equipment of questionable benefit. Especially when every bit of equipment introduces it's own new risks.
Agreed, overall they're safe. I'm just pointing out that the time of the phase-out in the US is effectively FAA-mandated due to the airlines not wanting to retrofit the fleet, as e.g. BA has apparently done.
This is an interesting bit of trivia, and not something you'll find in airline press releases since for better or worse it's going to make them look worse in the eyes of their customers.
There's ~500 747s[1] in service. So 30k/500 =~ 60yrs, or a 25% chance that one will blow up in the next 15 years. So this seems like a reasonable retrofit given the cost.
I assume that the FAA knows what it's doing and 12% oxygen helps, even if it's not 9%, similarly I assume they've taken into account the risk of retrofitting existing planes, since they started explicitly mandating that in 2008.
It's silly to spend a large amount of money to retrofit planes near the end of their useful lives with safety equipment of questionable benefit. Especially when every bit of equipment introduces it's own new risks.