4 ms·

I wonder what kind of computer issue requires them to ground their whole fleet? Can’t the pilots just use Foreflight for the weather?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
shadowgovt 5y ago
For liability reasons, I assume if they can't use their standard systems, they can't fly. Commercial flight safety is all about standardization, reproducibility, and predictability. Switching the weather source for the pilots violates all three of those principles.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  You would hope, though, that what is standardized would include redundancy; resiliency has to be a concern at some level.
- aeternum 5y ago
  I often wonder if delays like this should also be treated as some kind of safety issue. Somehow we've decided that any loss of life or injury via a crash is unacceptable. Yet we treat delays (both airline and traffic) that cost millions of human life hours as barely newsworthy. Would it be better if we considered policies in terms of human life hours saved rather than human lives? Is that already being done?
  - jacques_chester 5y ago
    The optionality value of not being dead is surprisingly high, meaning that most folks would trade 1 hour of not-death for many hours of not-delayed.
    - aeternum 5y ago
      Shouldn't the equation be how many hours of delay you would trade for one hour of not-death? Taken to an extreme, suppose we found 5 hours worth of airline safety video prior to a flight saved 10 human lives per year as it made it less likely people would evacuate the plane with their belongings. If you led the FAA, would you mandate each passenger watch this video before each flight in order to save those lives? Put another way, is 5 hours * 5 billion airline passengers / year worth 10 humans lives / year?
      - jacques_chester 5y ago
        If I led the FAA, I'd stay the course. Being dead is infinite. Delays due to safety are not.
        yuliyp 5y ago
        At some point the total life duration cost of the safety actions exceeds the sum of the extended lives due to the safety actions. In the 5 billion hours example, 10 people live for under 10 million hours in total (1 million hours = 114 years). You'd have spent 5000 lives worth of time to save 10, which is not worth it in the aggregate.
        shadowgovt 5y ago
        That's assuming that all of the people that aren't traveling have just been put in stasis or something. People waiting for their plane when it's delayed go on about their lives. They're not on plan A, but they're still living. People who die in a plane crash don't get to execute on plans A through Z. Even if you run the numbers as a comparison of hours lost waiting for your plane to years lost from somebody's actuarial life expectancy because they died in a crash, it's not a one for one comparison.
        aeternum 5y ago
        Yes, this is a good point, an hour of being dead has zero utility whereas an hour of being delayed has at least partial utility.
  - ihumanable 5y ago
    The number of people that are ok dying to prevent "lost human life hours" is probably near zero.
  - vajrabum 5y ago
    The risk of loss of a passenger aircraft isn't the same thing as not wearing a seatbelt or being late for a party. Nobody sane would want to be personally responsible for the death of 200 or 300 people in one go. The FAA has a no commercial aviation accident policy and I for one support that policy.
    - saalweachter 5y ago
      Let's also keep in mind that airlines aren't making the calculation of balancing delay-hours against lives-lost. They are making the calculation of lives-lost and delay-hours against dollars. Meanwhile, passengers largely assume they won't die regardless of which airline they pick, and happily take absurd delays and unnecessary connections in exchange for lower ticket prices time and time again.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    That's an actuarial solution. Not without merit, but IIUC the thinking is the public will not abide a crash where the root cause traces to "yeah it was a little unsafe, but think of the time lost if we'd delayed a day!"
    - bombcar 5y ago
      I mean OSHA basically exists because people are really REALLY bad at making the time/disaster tradeoff calculation.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        No, OSHA exists because liability doesn't completely internalize the harms of disasters to those responsible for working conditions, so other controls are necessary to prevent their being a rational net incentive to knowingly risk disaster.
  - noizejoy 5y ago
    I don’t have numbers, but intuitively speaking: Wouldn’t the cost differential in saving lives come down over time as the technology and procedures mature and amortize? In other words, wouldn’t the calculation need to be treated much like any capital investment with net benefits needing some time to kick in?
  - nwallin 5y ago
    When an airline has a crash, its stock price drops 1.58% that day on average. [0] Southwest's stock is down 0.28% today, and it looks like most of that drop happened immediately after the market opened, well before this incident, and may be related to today's stocks being down 0.21% overall. At first glance it appears that investors are entirely unconcerned with this delay. For whatever reason, we as a society have decided that airliner crashes are scarier than car crashes. Just like we've decided terrorism, nuclear energy, and self driving cars are scarier than they actually are. Should we be this way? Probably not, but this is the way the world is. [0] https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1785906 https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1785906
    - aeternum 5y ago
      Yes, I agree the world works that way, people are poor at risk assessment. My question though is how should it work? What's the most optimal tradeoff between delays vs lives lost?
- nwallin 5y ago
  Brings to mind the sinking of the El Faro. The captain was relying on the free version of a paid weather app that gated up to date information. The 12 hours out of date information showed the planned/filed path to be safe, but in reality the captain sailed straight into the center of a hurricane, and sank with all hands. Many other factors contributed to the sinking, but one of the NTSB bulletpoints was to rely on official weather sources only. I wonder if that directive played a role here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15554602 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15554602 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17160396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17160396 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_El_Faro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_El_Faro

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

shadowgovt 5y ago

For liability reasons, I assume if they can't use their standard systems, they can't fly. Commercial flight safety is all about standardization, reproducibility, and predictability. Switching the weather source for the pilots violates all three of those principles.

dragonwriter 5y ago
You would hope, though, that what is standardized would include redundancy; resiliency has to be a concern at some level.
aeternum 5y ago
I often wonder if delays like this should also be treated as some kind of safety issue. Somehow we've decided that any loss of life or injury via a crash is unacceptable. Yet we treat delays (both airline and traffic) that cost millions of human life hours as barely newsworthy. Would it be better if we considered policies in terms of human life hours saved rather than human lives? Is that already being done?
- jacques_chester 5y ago
  The optionality value of not being dead is surprisingly high, meaning that most folks would trade 1 hour of not-death for many hours of not-delayed.
  - aeternum 5y ago
    Shouldn't the equation be how many hours of delay you would trade for one hour of not-death? Taken to an extreme, suppose we found 5 hours worth of airline safety video prior to a flight saved 10 human lives per year as it made it less likely people would evacuate the plane with their belongings. If you led the FAA, would you mandate each passenger watch this video before each flight in order to save those lives? Put another way, is 5 hours * 5 billion airline passengers / year worth 10 humans lives / year?
    - jacques_chester 5y ago
      If I led the FAA, I'd stay the course. Being dead is infinite. Delays due to safety are not.
      - yuliyp 5y ago
        At some point the total life duration cost of the safety actions exceeds the sum of the extended lives due to the safety actions. In the 5 billion hours example, 10 people live for under 10 million hours in total (1 million hours = 114 years). You'd have spent 5000 lives worth of time to save 10, which is not worth it in the aggregate.
        shadowgovt 5y ago
        That's assuming that all of the people that aren't traveling have just been put in stasis or something. People waiting for their plane when it's delayed go on about their lives. They're not on plan A, but they're still living. People who die in a plane crash don't get to execute on plans A through Z. Even if you run the numbers as a comparison of hours lost waiting for your plane to years lost from somebody's actuarial life expectancy because they died in a crash, it's not a one for one comparison.
        aeternum 5y ago
        Yes, this is a good point, an hour of being dead has zero utility whereas an hour of being delayed has at least partial utility.
- ihumanable 5y ago
  The number of people that are ok dying to prevent "lost human life hours" is probably near zero.
- vajrabum 5y ago
  The risk of loss of a passenger aircraft isn't the same thing as not wearing a seatbelt or being late for a party. Nobody sane would want to be personally responsible for the death of 200 or 300 people in one go. The FAA has a no commercial aviation accident policy and I for one support that policy.
  - saalweachter 5y ago
    Let's also keep in mind that airlines aren't making the calculation of balancing delay-hours against lives-lost. They are making the calculation of lives-lost and delay-hours against dollars. Meanwhile, passengers largely assume they won't die regardless of which airline they pick, and happily take absurd delays and unnecessary connections in exchange for lower ticket prices time and time again.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  That's an actuarial solution. Not without merit, but IIUC the thinking is the public will not abide a crash where the root cause traces to "yeah it was a little unsafe, but think of the time lost if we'd delayed a day!"
  - bombcar 5y ago
    I mean OSHA basically exists because people are really REALLY bad at making the time/disaster tradeoff calculation.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      No, OSHA exists because liability doesn't completely internalize the harms of disasters to those responsible for working conditions, so other controls are necessary to prevent their being a rational net incentive to knowingly risk disaster.
- noizejoy 5y ago
  I don’t have numbers, but intuitively speaking: Wouldn’t the cost differential in saving lives come down over time as the technology and procedures mature and amortize? In other words, wouldn’t the calculation need to be treated much like any capital investment with net benefits needing some time to kick in?
- nwallin 5y ago
  When an airline has a crash, its stock price drops 1.58% that day on average. [0] Southwest's stock is down 0.28% today, and it looks like most of that drop happened immediately after the market opened, well before this incident, and may be related to today's stocks being down 0.21% overall. At first glance it appears that investors are entirely unconcerned with this delay. For whatever reason, we as a society have decided that airliner crashes are scarier than car crashes. Just like we've decided terrorism, nuclear energy, and self driving cars are scarier than they actually are. Should we be this way? Probably not, but this is the way the world is. [0] https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1785906 https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1785906
  - aeternum 5y ago
    Yes, I agree the world works that way, people are poor at risk assessment. My question though is how should it work? What's the most optimal tradeoff between delays vs lives lost?
nwallin 5y ago
Brings to mind the sinking of the El Faro. The captain was relying on the free version of a paid weather app that gated up to date information. The 12 hours out of date information showed the planned/filed path to be safe, but in reality the captain sailed straight into the center of a hurricane, and sank with all hands. Many other factors contributed to the sinking, but one of the NTSB bulletpoints was to rely on official weather sources only. I wonder if that directive played a role here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15554602 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15554602 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17160396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17160396 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_El_Faro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_El_Faro