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That's actually not true. The "safe" recommendation is to keep all planes in the sky regardless of suspected safety issues because alternative transportation i

That's actually not true. The "safe" recommendation is to keep all planes in the sky regardless of suspected safety issues because alternative transportation is not safer than a dangerous airplane.

acover 3y ago
There are other planes.
- boringuser2 3y ago
  Yes, but can you reasonably suggest that air travel wouldn't be in any way disrupted by grounding planes in active rotation for an airline? This must be your position if you were to post this.
  - dendriti 3y ago
    Nobody mentioned anything about lack of disruption except you. Moving those goalposts.
kelnos 3y ago
If the alternative to flying is not taking the trip at all, then that's certainly safest. And I imagine that's the case for many trips, especially those where the flight is more than an hour and a half or so. (Consider that I can fly from SF to LA in an hour and a half, but it's a 6-hour drive. If my flight was canceled and I couldn't find an alternative flight, I just wouldn't go at all. Certainly there are some extreme situations where I might bite the bullet and drive, but that'd be rare.) Put another way: when we know something is unsafe, we shouldn't keep it going just because of the theoretical risk of alternatives. And yes, I know that the risk of driving isn't "theoretical", but we can't fully predict what humans will do absent their first choice of transportation.
- boringuser2 3y ago
  Most flight isn't for pleasure.
  - alistairSH 3y ago
    What’s that have to do with it? If I have to fly for a one-day or two-day business meeting, and I can’t find a flight, I don’t go. Driving ensures I miss the meeting. Staying put, I can at least join virtually.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      You are fortunate to have that option available. A lot of people don't, if they want to keep their jobs. I only know a few people who fly willingly.
WheatMillington 3y ago
Air transportation may be overall safe, but the 737 Max was a dangerous aircraft that resulted in hundreds of deaths. Youer position is extraordinarily peurile.
- boringuser2 3y ago
  Tu quoque. There's absolutely no way it was a more dangerous form of travel than driving. I am intimately familiar with both catastrophic failures of the 737 Max, which involved undertrained pilots from third world airlines.
  - cduzz 3y ago
    The whole point of the 737 max was that the pilots wouldn't be trained on the "max" part of the 737 -- they were qualified for the 737 and there's some hidden emulator making the "max" fly like a 737. As soon as the emulator got bad feedback from the one sensor that was used to map "max" airframe behavor to "737" controls, all bets were off. And because the pilots weren't allowed to know they were in a Max not a 737 (which would require further training that would void the advantages of the Max) there was no SOP for how to deal with "your Max is blind and can't pretend to be a 737" The "poorly trained" pilots weren't test pilots -- pilots aren't supposed to be able to improvise and react to things off book.
  - shanoaice 3y ago
    I am also very familiar with both catastrophic failures of 737 MAX and I can be extremely certain that undertrained pilot is only one of the factor. Boeing's extremely fail-unsafe and irredundant design of MCAS causes the failure in the first place, and they do not provide enough training material related to this system (in the first incidence they providie not training at all. MCAS is not even mentioned in the pilot's manual, nor does most maintainence crew know the existence of such system). Blaming people, especially pilot, is the easiest way to end an air crash investigation, but the industry will never be safer if nobody take the root cause seriously.
  - alistairSH 3y ago
    “Undertrained” because Boeing told them extra training g wasn’t necessary.[1] Both pilots had multiple thousands of flight hours (well beyond the minimum 1500 required to co-pilot in the US). Only the co-pilot of the Ethiopian Air flight would have been deemed too new to fly for a US airline (and even then, only post-Colgan Air 3407). 1 - https://fortune.com/2020/01/14/boeing-lion-air-extra-737-max-pilot-training-simulator-crash/amp/ https://fortune.com/2020/01/14/boeing-lion-air-extra-737-max...
themitigating 3y ago
No, there's some balance. Both grounding all flights over ever safely issue is wrong but so is not.
mannykannot 3y ago
I doubt this is a feasible calculation. Firstly, grounding one type will not shut down air transport (though it will degrade service, complicate operations, and possibly have unanticipated consequences.) Secondly, the travel being disrupted will not all be completed by other means. Thirdly, it is not possible to estimate the risk of not grounding as the cause of the problem is not well-understood.
KennyBlanken 3y ago
> The "safe" recommendation is to keep all planes in the sky regardless of suspected safety issues because alternative transportation is not safer than a dangerous airplane. You're presumably taking the average deaths per miles and applying it in the sense of "those people would drive and that's more dangerous." ...that's....not how that works. You assume: * they would take alternate transportation, instead of canceling the trip or booking another flight not on a MAX. At the time there were just 387 MAX aircraft in the world in service. * that said transportation would be passenger cars. Trains and busses are 10x (or more) safer than passenger cars per passenger mile. They're so safe that the danger to a passenger is basically insignificantly higher compared to commercial jet flights (and by the way, the industry very conveniently separates out "commuter" flights, which are FAR more dangerous.) * that the overall safety of the commercial jet fleet is applicable to flights on a specific model of jet, which were clearly more dangerous, with not just two crashes in close proximity, but several close calls and almost certainly numerous other incidents that went unnoticed or unreported

That's actually not true. The "safe" recommendation is to keep all planes in the sky regardless of suspected safety issues because alternative transportation is not safer than a dangerous airplane.

acover 3y ago

There are other planes.

boringuser2 3y ago
Yes, but can you reasonably suggest that air travel wouldn't be in any way disrupted by grounding planes in active rotation for an airline? This must be your position if you were to post this.
- dendriti 3y ago
  Nobody mentioned anything about lack of disruption except you. Moving those goalposts.

kelnos 3y ago

If the alternative to flying is not taking the trip at all, then that's certainly safest. And I imagine that's the case for many trips, especially those where the flight is more than an hour and a half or so. (Consider that I can fly from SF to LA in an hour and a half, but it's a 6-hour drive. If my flight was canceled and I couldn't find an alternative flight, I just wouldn't go at all. Certainly there are some extreme situations where I might bite the bullet and drive, but that'd be rare.) Put another way: when we know something is unsafe, we shouldn't keep it going just because of the theoretical risk of alternatives. And yes, I know that the risk of driving isn't "theoretical", but we can't fully predict what humans will do absent their first choice of transportation.

boringuser2 3y ago
Most flight isn't for pleasure.
- alistairSH 3y ago
  What’s that have to do with it? If I have to fly for a one-day or two-day business meeting, and I can’t find a flight, I don’t go. Driving ensures I miss the meeting. Staying put, I can at least join virtually.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    You are fortunate to have that option available. A lot of people don't, if they want to keep their jobs. I only know a few people who fly willingly.

WheatMillington 3y ago

Air transportation may be overall safe, but the 737 Max was a dangerous aircraft that resulted in hundreds of deaths. Youer position is extraordinarily peurile.

boringuser2 3y ago
Tu quoque. There's absolutely no way it was a more dangerous form of travel than driving. I am intimately familiar with both catastrophic failures of the 737 Max, which involved undertrained pilots from third world airlines.
- cduzz 3y ago
  The whole point of the 737 max was that the pilots wouldn't be trained on the "max" part of the 737 -- they were qualified for the 737 and there's some hidden emulator making the "max" fly like a 737. As soon as the emulator got bad feedback from the one sensor that was used to map "max" airframe behavor to "737" controls, all bets were off. And because the pilots weren't allowed to know they were in a Max not a 737 (which would require further training that would void the advantages of the Max) there was no SOP for how to deal with "your Max is blind and can't pretend to be a 737" The "poorly trained" pilots weren't test pilots -- pilots aren't supposed to be able to improvise and react to things off book.
- shanoaice 3y ago
  I am also very familiar with both catastrophic failures of 737 MAX and I can be extremely certain that undertrained pilot is only one of the factor. Boeing's extremely fail-unsafe and irredundant design of MCAS causes the failure in the first place, and they do not provide enough training material related to this system (in the first incidence they providie not training at all. MCAS is not even mentioned in the pilot's manual, nor does most maintainence crew know the existence of such system). Blaming people, especially pilot, is the easiest way to end an air crash investigation, but the industry will never be safer if nobody take the root cause seriously.
- alistairSH 3y ago
  “Undertrained” because Boeing told them extra training g wasn’t necessary.[1] Both pilots had multiple thousands of flight hours (well beyond the minimum 1500 required to co-pilot in the US). Only the co-pilot of the Ethiopian Air flight would have been deemed too new to fly for a US airline (and even then, only post-Colgan Air 3407). 1 - https://fortune.com/2020/01/14/boeing-lion-air-extra-737-max-pilot-training-simulator-crash/amp/ https://fortune.com/2020/01/14/boeing-lion-air-extra-737-max...

themitigating 3y ago

No, there's some balance. Both grounding all flights over ever safely issue is wrong but so is not.

mannykannot 3y ago

I doubt this is a feasible calculation. Firstly, grounding one type will not shut down air transport (though it will degrade service, complicate operations, and possibly have unanticipated consequences.) Secondly, the travel being disrupted will not all be completed by other means. Thirdly, it is not possible to estimate the risk of not grounding as the cause of the problem is not well-understood.

KennyBlanken 3y ago

> The "safe" recommendation is to keep all planes in the sky regardless of suspected safety issues because alternative transportation is not safer than a dangerous airplane. You're presumably taking the average deaths per miles and applying it in the sense of "those people would drive and that's more dangerous." ...that's....not how that works. You assume: * they would take alternate transportation, instead of canceling the trip or booking another flight not on a MAX. At the time there were just 387 MAX aircraft in the world in service. * that said transportation would be passenger cars. Trains and busses are 10x (or more) safer than passenger cars per passenger mile. They're so safe that the danger to a passenger is basically insignificantly higher compared to commercial jet flights (and by the way, the industry very conveniently separates out "commuter" flights, which are FAR more dangerous.) * that the overall safety of the commercial jet fleet is applicable to flights on a specific model of jet, which were clearly more dangerous, with not just two crashes in close proximity, but several close calls and almost certainly numerous other incidents that went unnoticed or unreported