6 ms·

On one hand, I understand your sentiment, on the other hand even with these bugs air travel is as safe as it’s ever been. We’ve reached a point where fewer peop

On one hand, I understand your sentiment, on the other hand even with these bugs air travel is as safe as it’s ever been. We’ve reached a point where fewer people die in air travel per year than at any other point in the history of air travel, and that’s before you account for the number of miles travelled. It’s almost ridiculous how safe air travel is on average.

londons_explore 6y ago
commercial air travel. Private planes and industrial planes still have an awful safety record. Most stats also exclude 'unrelated' deaths which happen during a flight (even though there is a good chance the changes in air pressure, stress, lack of medical care, and cramped conditions at least contributed to the death). Stats also often exclude terrorist or war shootdowns of commercial planes, which are starting to become significant.
- bsder 6y ago
  > Private planes and industrial planes still have an awful safety record. I don't know about industrial, but I assume "private" is a combination of 1) private pilots suck and 2) too much catering to client. Kobe Bryant would be my unfortunate shining example of 2). The pilot either wanted to cater to Kobe or would get fired if he didn't, and so went up in weather that it was stupid to go up in. As for 1), I've seen far too many sleep-deprived, hungover, drunk, or stoned private airplane pilots. And this is on top of the fact that they probably aren't the most experienced pilots to begin with. What is it about piloting that seems to attract frat boys who never grew up?
martinald 6y ago
That was true until 737 MAX, which statistically must have been one of the most dangerous planes (or jets at least) in history. Very few miles and 2 complete hull loss incidents very close together. These bugs really do matter. You can have quite a lot of minor issues and get away with it, but when you hit a serious failure like the MAX had, even if only triggered 1 in 10,000 flights ends up with an awful lot of casualties.
- phire 6y ago
  MCAS was not a bug. The software behaved excatly as specified. The issue was the specification itself, which assumed pilots would reliably catch the uncommanded trim down, diagnose it and disable the whole electric trim subsystem within seconds of the problem behavior arising. That assumption turned out to be massively flawed.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    Your comment implicitly - and probably unintentionally - appears to assign part of the blame to the pilots, which I think is a very bad thing to do in this particular case.
    - shreyansj 6y ago
      I think specification here refers to the type specification of the aircraft. It's not putting the burden on the pilots but rather on the lack of pilot training due to Boeing and airlines not wanting to bear the cost of training pilots to a new aircraft type.
      - bsder 6y ago
        > airlines not wanting to bear the cost of training pilots to a new aircraft type. This is a perfectly reasonable request by the airlines. Some airlines rely on the operational efficiency of a single aircraft type. It lets them interchange parts and people and not have to worry that the wrong airplane is in the wrong spot. What is NOT reasonable was Boeing providing an aircraft that actually had MAJOR differences yet claiming it was the same. And what makes it particularly stupid is no airline that relies on a single airplane type is going to switch from Boeing to Airbus because they would have to migrate their entire fleet en masse. So Boeing had plenty of time to certify the 737 MAX airframe properly.
    - redis_mlc 6y ago
      Incorrect. The Indonesian investigators shared blame between Boeing, mechanics and pilots. (Their NTSB is US-trained.)

londons_explore 6y ago

commercial air travel. Private planes and industrial planes still have an awful safety record. Most stats also exclude 'unrelated' deaths which happen during a flight (even though there is a good chance the changes in air pressure, stress, lack of medical care, and cramped conditions at least contributed to the death). Stats also often exclude terrorist or war shootdowns of commercial planes, which are starting to become significant.

bsder 6y ago
> Private planes and industrial planes still have an awful safety record. I don't know about industrial, but I assume "private" is a combination of 1) private pilots suck and 2) too much catering to client. Kobe Bryant would be my unfortunate shining example of 2). The pilot either wanted to cater to Kobe or would get fired if he didn't, and so went up in weather that it was stupid to go up in. As for 1), I've seen far too many sleep-deprived, hungover, drunk, or stoned private airplane pilots. And this is on top of the fact that they probably aren't the most experienced pilots to begin with. What is it about piloting that seems to attract frat boys who never grew up?

martinald 6y ago

That was true until 737 MAX, which statistically must have been one of the most dangerous planes (or jets at least) in history. Very few miles and 2 complete hull loss incidents very close together. These bugs really do matter. You can have quite a lot of minor issues and get away with it, but when you hit a serious failure like the MAX had, even if only triggered 1 in 10,000 flights ends up with an awful lot of casualties.

phire 6y ago
MCAS was not a bug. The software behaved excatly as specified. The issue was the specification itself, which assumed pilots would reliably catch the uncommanded trim down, diagnose it and disable the whole electric trim subsystem within seconds of the problem behavior arising. That assumption turned out to be massively flawed.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Your comment implicitly - and probably unintentionally - appears to assign part of the blame to the pilots, which I think is a very bad thing to do in this particular case.
  - shreyansj 6y ago
    I think specification here refers to the type specification of the aircraft. It's not putting the burden on the pilots but rather on the lack of pilot training due to Boeing and airlines not wanting to bear the cost of training pilots to a new aircraft type.
    - bsder 6y ago
      > airlines not wanting to bear the cost of training pilots to a new aircraft type. This is a perfectly reasonable request by the airlines. Some airlines rely on the operational efficiency of a single aircraft type. It lets them interchange parts and people and not have to worry that the wrong airplane is in the wrong spot. What is NOT reasonable was Boeing providing an aircraft that actually had MAJOR differences yet claiming it was the same. And what makes it particularly stupid is no airline that relies on a single airplane type is going to switch from Boeing to Airbus because they would have to migrate their entire fleet en masse. So Boeing had plenty of time to certify the 737 MAX airframe properly.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    Incorrect. The Indonesian investigators shared blame between Boeing, mechanics and pilots. (Their NTSB is US-trained.)