13 ms·

I'd happily fly 737 MAX if the ticket price would be lower. The chance of dying on the way to the airport is astronomically higher anyway.

JKCalhoun 5y ago
Interesting statistic. Is that using distance as the parameter? That is, is that saying that for a 1000 miles traveled driving is more dangerous than flying in a 737 Max?
- colechristensen 5y ago
  The per-mile death rate is something like 750 times greater driving than flying. So a 1500 mile flight is as dangerous as a 2 mile drive to the airport.
  - ergocoder 5y ago
    Oh man I was expecting a much higher difference.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - imoverclocked 5y ago
    Makes sense since there is only about 2 miles of runway traveled at either end.
  - tzs 5y ago
    Per mile isn't really that good a measure for either flying or driving, because the risk of both flying and driving depends on where the miles are. For driving, the risk is much higher in cities on surface streets than it is on freeways between cities, for example. So a 10 mile round trip to the grocery store and back would probably be orders of magnitude more dangerous per mile than an 800 mile round trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco and back. But your chances of dying on the grocery store trip and your chances of dying at one of the ends of your LA/SF trip would be roughly the same. Same with flying. Takeoff, climbing to cruising altitude, cruising, descending for landing, and landing all have different risk profiles. A long trip is much safer per mile than a short trip because most of it is spent cruising at high altitude which is the safest part of the trip, but the overall risk is usually going to be higher on the long trip. Driving is further complicated because you have a lot more control over your safety when driving than you do when flying. When I've flown from LA to SF, it was probably about the same risk no matter what time of day I went. When I've driven from LA to SF, I've generally been able to pick times of day when there was little traffic at the ends, and there were generally no other cars within a couple miles of me on the freeway. That should have put my risk way below the average driving risk. (Note: I am not claiming that I am a more skilled or safer driver than average!). It was still probably more risky than flying, but not orders of magnitude more risky.
    - edoceo 5y ago
      So, you're the other car I see on 101 at 3am :)
  - addicted 5y ago
    The commenters argument is illogical. The commenter is engaging in 2 activities. Driving a car and then taking a plane. The fact that driving a car is riskier than taking a plane does not mean that that taking a plane that is 30x riskier than other planes doesn’t affect their risk. These are 2 independent risk events. If the taking plane part of your travel schedule becomes more risky, your overall risk also rises. The fact that driving a car is extremely risky has nothing to do with what price they should be willing to pay for the increased risk they would be taking flying a riskier plane.
- FearlessNebula 5y ago
  Both for miles and time spent doing the activity
jonplackett 5y ago
Something to consider: 737 MAX crash rate is 3.08 per million. Vs 0.1 for the other 737 models, so it's about 30X less safe. http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm
- xxpor 5y ago
  With an incredibly small sample size
  - Someone1234 5y ago
    Right, because it was withdrawn from service for being so unsafe. I mean I'm all for "glass half full" but blaming the sample size when the sample size is a direct result of its unsafety seems a little misleading. If the 737 Max could have kept flying the sample size would have increased, and it would likely have become even more unsafe statistically as the casualties continued to mount.
  - stevula 5y ago
    You don’t always need a large sample size to show correlation. When an incredibly rare event happens twice in a short span of time, the chances of it being a random fluke are vanishingly small. And anyways I thought it was pretty clear that MCAS caused the crashes?
  - jonplackett 5y ago
    Do you think Concorde is still safe then, because the sample size was so small? It's not like it's a tiny bit higher than all the other planes in the list. It's more than an order of magnitude higher (except Concorde, which was immediately withdrawn from service and decommissioned).
    - redis_mlc 5y ago
      > Do you think Concorde is still safe then, because the sample size was so small? The Concorde was never a safe airplane. Besides the wrong tires, unarmored fuel cells and baggage loading CG issues, the honeycomb movable flight structures suffered from water intrusion damage and the rotation and stall speeds were too high. (I doubt if anybody would certify it for civil use today.) On top of that, flying at Mach 2 is simply dangerous.

JKCalhoun 5y ago

Interesting statistic. Is that using distance as the parameter? That is, is that saying that for a 1000 miles traveled driving is more dangerous than flying in a 737 Max?

colechristensen 5y ago
The per-mile death rate is something like 750 times greater driving than flying. So a 1500 mile flight is as dangerous as a 2 mile drive to the airport.
- ergocoder 5y ago
  Oh man I was expecting a much higher difference.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- imoverclocked 5y ago
  Makes sense since there is only about 2 miles of runway traveled at either end.
- tzs 5y ago
  Per mile isn't really that good a measure for either flying or driving, because the risk of both flying and driving depends on where the miles are. For driving, the risk is much higher in cities on surface streets than it is on freeways between cities, for example. So a 10 mile round trip to the grocery store and back would probably be orders of magnitude more dangerous per mile than an 800 mile round trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco and back. But your chances of dying on the grocery store trip and your chances of dying at one of the ends of your LA/SF trip would be roughly the same. Same with flying. Takeoff, climbing to cruising altitude, cruising, descending for landing, and landing all have different risk profiles. A long trip is much safer per mile than a short trip because most of it is spent cruising at high altitude which is the safest part of the trip, but the overall risk is usually going to be higher on the long trip. Driving is further complicated because you have a lot more control over your safety when driving than you do when flying. When I've flown from LA to SF, it was probably about the same risk no matter what time of day I went. When I've driven from LA to SF, I've generally been able to pick times of day when there was little traffic at the ends, and there were generally no other cars within a couple miles of me on the freeway. That should have put my risk way below the average driving risk. (Note: I am not claiming that I am a more skilled or safer driver than average!). It was still probably more risky than flying, but not orders of magnitude more risky.
  - edoceo 5y ago
    So, you're the other car I see on 101 at 3am :)
- addicted 5y ago
  The commenters argument is illogical. The commenter is engaging in 2 activities. Driving a car and then taking a plane. The fact that driving a car is riskier than taking a plane does not mean that that taking a plane that is 30x riskier than other planes doesn’t affect their risk. These are 2 independent risk events. If the taking plane part of your travel schedule becomes more risky, your overall risk also rises. The fact that driving a car is extremely risky has nothing to do with what price they should be willing to pay for the increased risk they would be taking flying a riskier plane.
FearlessNebula 5y ago
Both for miles and time spent doing the activity

jonplackett 5y ago

Something to consider: 737 MAX crash rate is 3.08 per million. Vs 0.1 for the other 737 models, so it's about 30X less safe. http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm

xxpor 5y ago
With an incredibly small sample size
- Someone1234 5y ago
  Right, because it was withdrawn from service for being so unsafe. I mean I'm all for "glass half full" but blaming the sample size when the sample size is a direct result of its unsafety seems a little misleading. If the 737 Max could have kept flying the sample size would have increased, and it would likely have become even more unsafe statistically as the casualties continued to mount.
- stevula 5y ago
  You don’t always need a large sample size to show correlation. When an incredibly rare event happens twice in a short span of time, the chances of it being a random fluke are vanishingly small. And anyways I thought it was pretty clear that MCAS caused the crashes?
- jonplackett 5y ago
  Do you think Concorde is still safe then, because the sample size was so small? It's not like it's a tiny bit higher than all the other planes in the list. It's more than an order of magnitude higher (except Concorde, which was immediately withdrawn from service and decommissioned).
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    > Do you think Concorde is still safe then, because the sample size was so small? The Concorde was never a safe airplane. Besides the wrong tires, unarmored fuel cells and baggage loading CG issues, the honeycomb movable flight structures suffered from water intrusion damage and the rotation and stall speeds were too high. (I doubt if anybody would certify it for civil use today.) On top of that, flying at Mach 2 is simply dangerous.