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During the time I worked for US Airways, a Boeing 757 with a Rolls Royce engine lost a ball bearing and all the oil dumped out of the plane. This is known as a
by rms 18y ago
During the time I worked for US Airways, a Boeing 757 with a Rolls Royce engine lost a ball bearing and all the oil dumped out of the plane. This is known as a "significant event." The pilot kept the engine on so it was destroyed by the time the plane landed.
The investigation concluded that a mechanic had probably made some type of mistake in maintenance. This was the most likely cause because there was no evidence that strongly pointed to any other cause. It very well could have been a mechanic's fault, but there was something fishy about the whole thing.
I'm not nearly as comfortable flying as I was before I had that job.
- vaksel 18y agoflying is still safer than any other method of transportation. You are something like 1000 times more likely to die in a car accident.
- laut 18y agoIs that per mile or per hour? If you drive you do have some control of the risk. By how you drive, which car you drive, how it's maintained and when you drive etc.
- eru 18y agoFlying is very save by distance. Trains are a bit saver per time, but not per distance. The safest vehicles I know of are elevators. You get to travel a mean distance of here to the sun between accidents.
- sgibat 18y agoIf you look at statistics of deaths per 100,000 per year (for example), yes, flying is safer than driving. But if you look at the likelihood of death per hour, driving and flying are equally as safe. It's just that you don't fly as much.
- jonknee 18y agoOr that planes travel at 7-15x the speed of cars... The real stat is fatalities per 100m passenger miles and planes lead significantly (a factor of several hundred).
- Lagged2Death 18y agoDeaths per passenger mile is the stat that air travel happens to achieve spectacular figures for, so of course it's the stat that the airlines have always touted as evidence for the safety of flying. In some ways, though, it's a silly measurement. In many (most?) cases, flying and driving are not equivalent alternatives. You can't drive to Hawaii and you can't buy a ticket on Northwest to the grocery store. A comparison of the deaths-per-passenger-mile stats for those two trips only sounds meaningful.
- marvin 18y agoYou'll have to back that statement up. There aren't nearly as many serious plane accidents as car accidents, by a factor of at least 100. At least if you consider regular airline traffic.
- dmm 18y agoBut remember that when a plane has a serious accident _hundreds_ of people may die.
- DenisM 18y agoIt's good that you don't know how food is made. :)
- DanielBMarkham 18y agoPlanes still fly fine without engines -- you just might be landing soon. Structural issues are another thing entirely.