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I agree. I’m regularly critical of Boeing Defense (particularly space contracts where I’m a huge Boeing skeptic), but I think people are pretty off base if the

I agree. I’m regularly critical of Boeing Defense (particularly space contracts where I’m a huge Boeing skeptic), but I think people are pretty off base if they think Boeing is just completely incompetent. Airliner safety is insanely good. Just vast seas of competence, but when there’s a super rare failure, the incorrect impression people get is that Boeing (or Airbus) is just full of incompetency. Almost nothing that humans do is held to the same standard. Not spaceflight, not software, not healthcare, and certainly not automotive. Flying a 737 Max with a bad door and without the fix to the angle of attack sensor is probably still better per mile than driving. In spite of going at 10 times the speed and miles above the Earth. You can almost argue it’s held to a higher standard than it should, slowing development of cleaner aviation (and therefore killing more people in the future due to tertiary effects of climate change, etc). It kind of annoys me when comment sections are filled with people talking about how incompetent Boeing is. It feels like out of shape slobs on their La-Z-boy chairs talking about how incompetent or slow some professional sports players are. Like, airliner safety is just a totally different league than almost anyone else plays in. On the worst day, their better than almost anyone else is on their best.

ethbr1 3y ago
> Airliner safety is insanely good. Because I dug it up for another comment, commercial carriers operating under Part 121 (roughly: scheduled passenger and cargo operation) had 4 fatal incidents in the last 10 years. [0] Totalling 6 deaths. In 10 years of US commercial carrier aviation. One of those was literally 'the engine exploded and threw part of the turbine into the cabin (and also shredded some of the wing)'!! Which resulted in 1 person dying and a successful landing. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38921664 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38921664
- bb88 3y ago
  > Totalling 6 deaths. In 10 years of US commercial carrier aviation. Okay, awesome. But how much of that was luck with the 737 Max that they didn't crash on US soil by US airlines?
  - thsksbd 3y ago
    Most of it. Statistically. Its not hard to assign part of the deaths from the MAXes to the US.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    How much was a rigorous safety regime and high quality training?
    - chx 3y ago
      Military training. See my comment above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38925089 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38925089
- thsksbd 3y ago
  Ya but your sample size is way too small to measure the death rate. Aircraft deaths are rare, but flying is too. The two MAX 8s that fell from the sky were 100% Boeing's fault and could have happened in the US. If 5% of airline traffic is in the US you can renormalize those hundreds of dead and you get dozens dead.
  - chx 3y ago
    We know US pilots have been warning about the same issues that led to the deathly crashes later but were ignored. The thing is, one part of US commercial aviation being so safe is a lot of pilots responsible for the jet airliners are ex-military. Someone mentioned Southwest Airlines Flight 1380, yup, captain Tammie Jo Shults was one of the first Navy female fighter pilots. Miracle on the Hudson? Sully Sullenberger was an Air Force captain and training officer. Civilian training, no matter how good, is just no replacement for military training and experience. I can't find specific numbers but estimates say about one in three has a military background. That's an awful lot.
    - mschuster91 3y ago
      > I can't find specific numbers but estimates say about one in three has a military background. That's an awful lot. Not surprising given that pilot training is really really expensive. Airlines love former military pilots because they are a significantly lower financial risk for them. Put them into type rating and off they go, it's rare that one ends up as a dud.
    - thsksbd 3y ago
      Let's assume American pilots are gods. They were shouting that their crafts were unsafe. No matter how good they are and how prescient, that doesn't help them if the aircraft computer decides it's stalling, forces a nose down and they cant fight the controls. But, even if we assume omnipotence from these American pilot gods, and assume they can fly outside the bird and Superman-style catch it, they are still only 30% of American pilots. Just another population to normalize out.
      - 3y ago
Eisenstein 3y ago
> It kind of annoys me when comment sections are filled with people talking about how incompetent Boeing is. It feels like out of shape slobs on their La-Z-boy chairs talking about how incompetent or slow some professional sports players are. People do this with everything though, and air travel induces a large amount of fear in the populace. Not only are we not generally comfortable flying in the air for obvious reasons, but when it happens almost everyone has to concede control to a few people in the cockpit and on the ground. Driving, even if exponentially more dangerous, affords the illusion of control of one's outcome, given driving or having someone you know driving, and control over the vehicle maintenance, etc, as well as familiarity with the control and mechanism of the vehicle. These things don't exist with airplanes for the vast majority of people. So, you can see why there is a need to find a human component to air travel problems, because that is something one can fix (fire the incompetent people, fine them, whatever), as opposed to all of the other things which must be accepted or rejected entirely. It is entirely in line with human nature to do this, regardless of its accuracy or effectiveness.
panick21_ 3y ago
Being better then driving shouldn't be the standart. Specially driving in the US. Flying isn't safer then trains I would assume. Flying has the advantage of being seperated from almost everything else. Most accidents happen when there is mixed traffic, specially cars operated by people with minimal training.
- maigret 3y ago
  https://turbli.com/blog/the-safest-transport-modes-ranked-by-statistics-from-10-years-of-data/ https://turbli.com/blog/the-safest-transport-modes-ranked-by...
kennethrc 3y ago
So much THIS
mschuster91 3y ago
> Airliner safety is insanely good. Just vast seas of competence, but when there’s a super rare failure, the incorrect impression people get is that Boeing (or Airbus) is just full of incompetency. Almost nothing that humans do is held to the same standard. Not spaceflight, not software, not healthcare, and certainly not automotive. And there's good reasons for that. Spaceflight actually is regulated pretty strictly (partially, because any spaceworthy rocket is effectively a missile), and space pilots and tourists both sign up for such missions fully knowing that they will have a very significant chance of dying one way or another - there simply hasn't been enough human spaceflight activity to work out and understand all the failure modes, unlike with other forms of transportation. Humans, unlike birds, aren't naturally wired to travel by air... they need to be able to trust their lives to a significantly higher degree to someone else behaving like they should, because unlike in a car they have zero control (or the illusion of control) in an aircraft. Additionally, the inherent security risk of an airliner is very high: what is a widebody airplane at its core? Hundreds of tons of weight, a decent portion of which is fuel, propelled at near-supersonic speed, and only two people in control of it. Anything goes bonkers and you can get thousands of people killed and injured (see 9/11). In contrast, cars, even trucks, have way less capability to cause damage simply because they weigh so much less. The only thing that comes close is railways, and hell I don't get what the US is doing there, there's barely any regulation compared to European standards (see the videos I linked at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38725988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38725988).

ethbr1 3y ago

> Airliner safety is insanely good. Because I dug it up for another comment, commercial carriers operating under Part 121 (roughly: scheduled passenger and cargo operation) had 4 fatal incidents in the last 10 years. [0] Totalling 6 deaths. In 10 years of US commercial carrier aviation. One of those was literally 'the engine exploded and threw part of the turbine into the cabin (and also shredded some of the wing)'!! Which resulted in 1 person dying and a successful landing. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38921664 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38921664

bb88 3y ago
> Totalling 6 deaths. In 10 years of US commercial carrier aviation. Okay, awesome. But how much of that was luck with the 737 Max that they didn't crash on US soil by US airlines?
- thsksbd 3y ago
  Most of it. Statistically. Its not hard to assign part of the deaths from the MAXes to the US.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  How much was a rigorous safety regime and high quality training?
  - chx 3y ago
    Military training. See my comment above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38925089 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38925089
thsksbd 3y ago
Ya but your sample size is way too small to measure the death rate. Aircraft deaths are rare, but flying is too. The two MAX 8s that fell from the sky were 100% Boeing's fault and could have happened in the US. If 5% of airline traffic is in the US you can renormalize those hundreds of dead and you get dozens dead.
- chx 3y ago
  We know US pilots have been warning about the same issues that led to the deathly crashes later but were ignored. The thing is, one part of US commercial aviation being so safe is a lot of pilots responsible for the jet airliners are ex-military. Someone mentioned Southwest Airlines Flight 1380, yup, captain Tammie Jo Shults was one of the first Navy female fighter pilots. Miracle on the Hudson? Sully Sullenberger was an Air Force captain and training officer. Civilian training, no matter how good, is just no replacement for military training and experience. I can't find specific numbers but estimates say about one in three has a military background. That's an awful lot.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    > I can't find specific numbers but estimates say about one in three has a military background. That's an awful lot. Not surprising given that pilot training is really really expensive. Airlines love former military pilots because they are a significantly lower financial risk for them. Put them into type rating and off they go, it's rare that one ends up as a dud.
  - thsksbd 3y ago
    Let's assume American pilots are gods. They were shouting that their crafts were unsafe. No matter how good they are and how prescient, that doesn't help them if the aircraft computer decides it's stalling, forces a nose down and they cant fight the controls. But, even if we assume omnipotence from these American pilot gods, and assume they can fly outside the bird and Superman-style catch it, they are still only 30% of American pilots. Just another population to normalize out.
    - 3y ago

Eisenstein 3y ago

> It kind of annoys me when comment sections are filled with people talking about how incompetent Boeing is. It feels like out of shape slobs on their La-Z-boy chairs talking about how incompetent or slow some professional sports players are. People do this with everything though, and air travel induces a large amount of fear in the populace. Not only are we not generally comfortable flying in the air for obvious reasons, but when it happens almost everyone has to concede control to a few people in the cockpit and on the ground. Driving, even if exponentially more dangerous, affords the illusion of control of one's outcome, given driving or having someone you know driving, and control over the vehicle maintenance, etc, as well as familiarity with the control and mechanism of the vehicle. These things don't exist with airplanes for the vast majority of people. So, you can see why there is a need to find a human component to air travel problems, because that is something one can fix (fire the incompetent people, fine them, whatever), as opposed to all of the other things which must be accepted or rejected entirely. It is entirely in line with human nature to do this, regardless of its accuracy or effectiveness.

panick21_ 3y ago

Being better then driving shouldn't be the standart. Specially driving in the US. Flying isn't safer then trains I would assume. Flying has the advantage of being seperated from almost everything else. Most accidents happen when there is mixed traffic, specially cars operated by people with minimal training.

maigret 3y ago
https://turbli.com/blog/the-safest-transport-modes-ranked-by-statistics-from-10-years-of-data/ https://turbli.com/blog/the-safest-transport-modes-ranked-by...

kennethrc 3y ago

So much THIS

mschuster91 3y ago

> Airliner safety is insanely good. Just vast seas of competence, but when there’s a super rare failure, the incorrect impression people get is that Boeing (or Airbus) is just full of incompetency. Almost nothing that humans do is held to the same standard. Not spaceflight, not software, not healthcare, and certainly not automotive. And there's good reasons for that. Spaceflight actually is regulated pretty strictly (partially, because any spaceworthy rocket is effectively a missile), and space pilots and tourists both sign up for such missions fully knowing that they will have a very significant chance of dying one way or another - there simply hasn't been enough human spaceflight activity to work out and understand all the failure modes, unlike with other forms of transportation. Humans, unlike birds, aren't naturally wired to travel by air... they need to be able to trust their lives to a significantly higher degree to someone else behaving like they should, because unlike in a car they have zero control (or the illusion of control) in an aircraft. Additionally, the inherent security risk of an airliner is very high: what is a widebody airplane at its core? Hundreds of tons of weight, a decent portion of which is fuel, propelled at near-supersonic speed, and only two people in control of it. Anything goes bonkers and you can get thousands of people killed and injured (see 9/11). In contrast, cars, even trucks, have way less capability to cause damage simply because they weigh so much less. The only thing that comes close is railways, and hell I don't get what the US is doing there, there's barely any regulation compared to European standards (see the videos I linked at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38725988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38725988).