IIRC, the risk with Jaguar M wasn’t so much engine failure on approach as afterburner failure. There was too much risk that the modulated afterburner would respond too slowly if the Jaguar needed to gain height during approach, so the safety margin was poor. Add all the other structural, range, performance, avionics & carrier refit issues, and the Super Etendard was clearly a better choice.

Jaguar International might have been a different story, but it didn’t even exist on paper when the decision was made in 1973.

See this thread: http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?t=66621&page=2