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They're not going to get me to sit in this shit plane again. Software update or not. I do not care.
by ulfw 7y ago
They're not going to get me to sit in this shit plane again. Software update or not. I do not care.
- umvi 7y agoStatistically, sitting in a 737 Max is still safer than sitting in your car
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Kiro 7y agoAll that argument has done for me (as a person afraid of flying) is to cause me to never sit in a car again.
- csommers 7y agoTrue, but I also know the Max has at least one serious design flaw. I don’t know the same about my car, which is why I’ll take it over a Max any day, and that’s why Boeing is having to PR themselves out of this mess.
- umvi 7y ago> I don’t know the same about my car, which is why I’ll take it over a Max any day "ignorance is bliss" If you knew how much software went into a car vs. an airplane, you might think twice. Airplanes seem more complicated than cars, but software-wise they are much simpler. Cars have millions upon millions more SLOC than airplanes. You think MCAS is bad, how about cars that have sudden loss of steering, emergency brakes that mysteriously engage, or a throttle that can't be disengaged? Serious design flaws in airplanes are these big dramatic events. Serious design flaws in cars pop up in the news every day, and we just ignore them [1][2]. [1] https://www.consumerreports.org/car-recalls-defects/mazda3-recall-sudden-unexpected-emergency-braking/ https://www.consumerreports.org/car-recalls-defects/mazda3-r... [2] https://www.consumerreports.org/car-recalls-defects/more-cars-recalled-due-to-faulty-takata-airbags/ https://www.consumerreports.org/car-recalls-defects/more-car...
- CydeWeys 7y agoSoftware flaws in cars are not nearly so catastrophic.
- umvi 7y agoCatastrophic as in 300 people will not die due to the flaw, yes. But one-off car fatalities that kill 1-3 people happen regularly and they add up. The self-driving variety pop up with the highest visibility but if you go searching you'll find tons of accidents where brake failure at highway speeds cause a fatal crash. I do concede that distracted driving and alcohol play a much bigger role in the large amount of car fatalities than software flaws. But I still stand by my original assertion that you are more likely to die due to the effects of a software flaw in your car than due to a software flaw in the 737 Max.
- CydeWeys 7y agoHow do software flaws in cars kill you exactly? The main example you bring up is brake failure at high speed, but that's not a software issue, that's a mechanical issue (and is oftentimes caused by neglecting maintenance on the part of the car owner). Yes, there's the self-driving stuff, and there have been some egregious examples, but those systems also save lives by preventing accidents. Lane departure warnings, automatic braking, and electronic stability control all, on the balance of things, make driving much safer.
- ulfw 7y agoOnly a heavy-software run car might (e.g. a Tesla autopilot or the Uber fatality). But I agree with you. I fail to see how software bug in a car would lead to a comparable outcome.
- bumby 7y agoI don’t think most people realize how software dependent their “dumb” car is. From antilock braking to throttle response to steering response in some cases is largely controlled by software. It goes way beyond the infotainment systems we intuitively think of as software
- magduf 7y ago>True, but I also know the Max has at least one serious design flaw. >I don’t know the same about my car In addition, there's no evidence that Airbus planes have design flaws as bad as MCAS. So why fly on a 737MAX when any other plane out there is safer?
- kayfox 7y agoThere is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72 Edit: To be clear, while this was 10 years ago and noone died, this incident seems to me to be a bit worse than the issues with the 737 MAX in that with the A330, there is no shutting off the systems that caused this issue, as they are part of the flight controls. Fortunately the causes were investigated and while the exact cause of the issue was not identified, the computer systems were updated to deal the fault scenarios identified in the investigation.
- ahartmetz 7y agoThat one was a case of electronic gremlins in one particular plane together with a quite particular edge case in the software, based on reasonable assumptions.
- kayfox 7y agoElectronic gremlins that resulted in the temporary loss of flight control responsiveness. In a fly by wire aircraft.
- mrep 7y ago> So why fly on a 737MAX when any other plane out there is safer? Well no one can fly one right now as they are all grounded. However, once they get approval for a fix from all countries, the airplanes get updated with said fix, and the pilots get whatever training required for the fix and thus can start flying again, why not fly them? Presumably, that failure type should never happen again and its record seems fine outside of this 1 problem.
- megablast 7y agoYour car has a definite design flaw. Other cars. You can be killed doing everything right. And 1000s of people are every year in the us.
- mplanchard 7y agoHowever, given an accident occurring, you are much more likely to die in a plane than a car. Higher stakes, lower odds.
- FabHK 7y agoHowever, there are surprisingly many incidents without fatalities [1], and also quite some accidents in which a good percentage of people survive. [1] See http://avherald.com http://avherald.com for example.
- CydeWeys 7y agoBy what metric? Time spent in it? Passenger miles?
- simion314 7y agoSo if airlines would be forced to print the stats and if on your ticket for a MAX will be printed 100x more likely to crash then 737 classic would you chose MAX because some cars,bathroom or lightning statistics?
- umvi 7y ago> 100x more likely https://xkcd.com/1252/ https://xkcd.com/1252/ Zero 737 Maxes have crashed on US soil. The same cannot be said of other 737 types.
- ulfw 7y agoOnly the mighty US of A matters.
- umvi 7y agoMy point is that American pilots probably have an intrinsic advantage flying American-made planes over foreign pilots (it's the "white privilege" of the aviation world). It's hard to measure, but it's likely there in the form of pilot social circles.
- simion314 7y agoDid you read about Boeing and airlines trying to cut more of the pilots training costs? With the FAA in Boeing's pockets (if this accidents would not have happened) you would probably get less simulator training and more VR, tablet apps and software hacks to make even more money for the rich.
- velosol 7y agoI doubt it's the fact that they're American flying American planes as egregious accidents happen even in those sorts of scenarios (cf. Air France 447, French pilots, French plane, French carrier). There's the NY Times Magazine article that reminded everyone of the word 'airmanship' [1] although it wasn't terribly well-received [2], [3] by some other pilots. If you don't want to read all those, basically pilots in richer countries might be more likely to also be private pilots and more familiar with how an aircraft 'feels' that translates to a better sense of what's happening in larger aircraft. Combine a lack of that in poorer countries with the dumpster fire of Boeing's choices, crap replacement parts, and 'limited' training regimens and you have a fatal error chain forged. The criticisms focus on the idea that heroic pilots who could recognize and avoid the situation probably aren't the norm. Further, there's often prejudice against pilots from developing countries even when they are competent; neither of these excuse the systemic failure and getting to the conclusion of "but for the pilots the crashes wouldn't have happened" is somewhere between insulting and reductive. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-crashes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-c... [2]: https://medium.com/@elanhead/the-limits-of-william-langewiesches-airmanship-52546f20ec9a https://medium.com/@elanhead/the-limits-of-william-langewies... [3]: https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/explosive-new-york-times-story-lays-blame-for-boeing-737-max-crashes/ https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/explosive-new-york-times-st...
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoPer mile or per trip? My fleet sums to ~100k trips and zero (human) deaths. The 737MAX can't claim such a low number of deaths per trip. Regardless, we can choose our metrics to paint whatever picture we want to paint and any metric we choose is of little use anyway because it's an apples to oranges comparison.
- umvi 7y ago> My fleet sums to ~100k trips and zero (human) deaths. The 737MAX can't claim such a low number of deaths per trip. 737 Max had ~500K death-free trips before its first crash.
- cjbprime 7y agoThat sounds very wrong. According to https://randy.newairplane.com/2018/05/22/737-max-a-year-of-serving-the-globe/ https://randy.newairplane.com/2018/05/22/737-max-a-year-of-s... the Max had only made 41k flights total in May 2018, six months before the first crash.
- umvi 7y agoYes, I think you are right, it is much lower than 500K, I misread the wiki page which stated it had 500K flights at the time groundings started and assumed there weren't a significant number of flights between the first crash and groundings.
- cjbprime 7y agoI'm still not sure I follow. How many flights do you think the MAX has now? I'd guess around 100k but the wiki says around 600k and the difference seems important.
- Xixi 7y agoDid you actually run the numbers? The 737 MAX statistics are abysmal [1]. It stands at 3.08 crashes per million flights, compared to 0.06 for the 737 NG. It's two orders of magnitude worse. Are cars really two orders of magnitude more dangerous than planes? [1] http://airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm http://airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm
- umvi 7y agoAs another commenter stated, you can mince statistics any way you want to paint any picture you want. Only two 737 MAX have ever crashed (both outside of the US), so the 3.08 figure is an extrapolation, not necessarily reality. After the software update it might have gone another 500K flights (or more) without a crash, leaving the figure at 2.0 (or smaller). Let's say you need to travel from NYC to San Diego. Let's assume a car death rate of 1.25 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles (a figure that popped up in Google). But that includes motorcyles and pedestrians, so let's play it safe and call it 1 death per 100 million miles. By now we are comparing apples (chance of death by trip) to oranges (chance of death per mile traveled) but let's press on. Distance from NYC to San Diego is 2,800 miles. So your chance of dying en route to San Diego is about 1 * 2,800 / 100,000,000 or ~30 in a million chance if using a car. Whereas with the MAX it is ~3 in a million (if you take a direct flight), or an order of magnitude more safe.
- Xixi 7y agoIndeed I looked into it a little bit more and found that planes are about three orders or magnitude safer than cars [1] (fatality per miles traveled). So even assuming that the MAX is two orders of magnitude less safe than the 737 NG (based on limited data), it would still be an order of magnitude safer than traveling by car. [1] I found 11 fatalities per trillion miles for planes, and 12.5 fatalities per billion miles for cars (in the US).
- ulfw 7y agoBut how does travel per million miles make sense? Nobody decides to fly from Singapore to Sydney or drive. It's just not comparable. It's hard to find a good statistic that would make modes of transport comparable. But if I'd pick one I'd pick time spent (are 10 hours on a plane more or less safe than 10 hours in a car)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- EdiX 7y agoThe trim wheel is the same as in every other 737, and it's one of the safest airplane types ever built.
- simion314 7y agoThe airplane is not the same even if some parts are reused,