9 ms·

I've heard a lot of people say this in these comment threads, and I think this glosses over the actual issue: safety is getting worse, not better or even stayin

I've heard a lot of people say this in these comment threads, and I think this glosses over the actual issue: safety is getting worse, not better or even staying the same. So it's MORE statistically significant than it was. The trend is heading the wrong way. Air safety going down is a trend you want to stop ASAP. Not wait around until it's just as dangerous as something else like driving your car.

DennisP 3y ago
That's true, but the question might be whether you personally should be worried if you find yourself on a 737 Max.
- alrs 3y ago
  The first worry as an American is having a pillar of your country's economy managed by incompetents.
  - gruez 3y ago
    Sounds a lot like "yeah sure, fear over 737 Max is overblown, but the fact that I was thinking about it in the first place says something about the current state of affairs". https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/aaaah https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/aaaah
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      People are concerned because it seems irrefutable that there is corruption and a culture of cost cutting causing these issues. Incompetence is understandable, improperly modeling the physics due to lack of experience or knowledge is understandable, but repeated instances that point to corruption at the government regulator and bad culture at the manufacturer lend to fears that the situation will get worse for a while before it gets better. It’s the same reason you might avoid flying on an Eastern European/Russian airplane. The perceived risks move from unforeseeable error or bad luck to systemic error.
    - alrs 3y ago
      It sounds nothing like that. Boeing is going to lose deals because carriers don't want to deal with repeated groundings. The US economy will reflect that.
- flashback2199 3y ago
  It doesn't matter. Nothing will change unless enough people begin voting with their feet.
  - jen20 3y ago
    Many airlines allow same day changes. If everyone scheduled on a Max reschedules for alternative flights consistently, they'll get the message soon enough. Refusing to board a Boeing plane at all is perfectly reasonable at this stage.
  - dkarl 3y ago
    That's not true, and we'd get to a much, much worse place if we relied on that. The industry put the current system in place because it could see that airlines would make gruesome compromises if consumer choice was the only thing driving safety.
    - flashback2199 3y ago
      What do you mean "if", anyone can choose what plane to fly on anytime.
duxup 3y ago
> Air safety going down Is it?
psunavy03 3y ago
[citation needed]
stouset 3y ago
> safety is getting worse, not better or even staying the same The only death in US major commercial aviation in ages was when a woman was partially sucked out of a window in 2018 when an engine failed and blew apart, breaking the window open. Before that, we have the Asiana flight which crashed after landing short at SFO, striking the undercarriage on the edge of the floating platform and cartwheeling. Everyone survived the crash, but a woman was killed when a fire truck ran over her amidst the firefighting foam. Prior to that we have to go to 2005 when a plane overran a runway and hit a car, killing one occupant… of the car. We have to go all the way back to November 2001 to have a serious accident where an American plane crashed on takeoff, killing all on board. Technically this was due to pilot error due to over-responding to wake turbulence, breaking off the vertical stabilizer. But it’s arguably an engineering issue that the pilot was able to induce catastrophic structural failure through control inputs. There has definitely been a worrying trend lately in operational error with pilots and ATC nearly causing accidents due to runway incursions, nearly landing on taxiways, etc. But it’s really hard to say with a straight face that major airlines have anything other than an exemplary safety record the likes of which has been completely unparalleled before now. We have had one single death aboard a major commercial aviator in the U.S. in more than twenty two years.
- flashback2199 3y ago
  The only reason nobody was injured this time was nobody was sitting in the seats next to the door plug that blew off. The seat was destroyed.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - BizarreByte 3y ago
    You're missing his point entirely. People are trying to make flying out as getting more dangerous, but that's factually incorrect.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > only reason nobody was injured this time was nobody was sitting in the seats next to the door plug This was a serious fuck-up. But it remains that there was at risk no more than one, maybe two, fatalities. That isn’t enough to justify the claim that “safety is getting worse.”
legitster 3y ago
> The trend is heading the wrong way. Contrary to this sentiment, air traffic safety continues to improve: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_accidents_and_incidents#Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_accidents_and_inciden... If anything, air travel is so safe now that non-fatal incidents such as this weeks' stand out more than they would have in previous decades. And in comparison, driving is getting much more dangerous (at least in the US). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U...
- not-my-account 3y ago
  But, we're seeing fatal issues with one specific company over and over again. Knowing that there is some systemic failure within Boeing must change your priors, no? What's wrong with pointing that out and being concerned?
  - legitster 3y ago
    I have concerns, but not enough not to fly. Everything I do in life is a calculated risk. If you told me my toaster was 3 times as likely to kill me today I would still probably toast my bread knowing that the base rate was already pretty low. If anything, knowing that all of the headline grabbing incidents has been confined to one product line at one company, and watching the amount of scrutiny they are receiving for it makes me feel safer overall.
    - nubb1nz 3y ago
      [dead]
  - gruez 3y ago
    > But, we're seeing fatal issues with one specific company over and over again. Knowing that there is some systemic failure within Boeing must change your priors, no? "systemic failure within Boeing" isn't necessarily inconsistent with "air traffic safety continues to improve". For instance, better pilot training and safety regulations might make flying even safer despite Boeing creating more crashes.
yreg 3y ago
Okay, but I'm not sure fearmongering is the way to go. There are already people in this thread afraid of taking a flight in one of these machines.[0] My mother is terrified. A subthread about the actual personal risk when flying the MAX is perfectly valid. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38929336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38929336
- psunavy03 3y ago
  > My mother is terrified. This is more or less equivalent to the little old lady in this comic saying "I'm wearing this to ward off A." Laypeople are notoriously crap at judging any kind of risk. https://phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd051809s.gif https://phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd051809s.gif
jmward01 3y ago
That is a big statement. Since 2019 there have been 32 fatalities connected to commercial aircraft. Most of those were iv very small aircraft like seaplanes and helicopters. 32 deaths in 4 years compared to ~40k/year in cars. We need to keep things in perspective.
- omikun 3y ago
  To keep things in perspective we should compare fatalities per person trips or person miles. Total deaths doesn't mean as much when a lot more people travel by car.
  - stouset 3y ago
    We do, and there has been one death due to an incident on a major U.S. airline since November 2001. You can maybe argue two, where a woman was killed after exiting an Asiana plane after it crashed at SFO. She was hit by an emergency vehicle responding to the scene.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      Asiana is not in the set of "major US airlines". Separately, major US airlines can reliably fly a daytime visual approach with a fully working airplane into a major airport.
  - hardcopy 3y ago
    eh. To a certain extent you should compare based on distance traveled, maybe. But total miles driven in the USA are quite high compared to other countries. Lots of driving simply doesn't need to happen, but occurs because we induce it by the way we design the places where we build. I don't really care how safe driving is per mile, I care if I'm going to be dead at the end of the year.
- ibejoeb 3y ago
  Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, a MAX, crashed in 2019, killing 157 people.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> safety is getting worse Record passenger miles flown [1] with years of zero fatalities since, I believe, 2020 [2][3] refutes this hypothesis. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RPM https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RPM [2] https://www.airlines.org/dataset/safety-record-of-u-s-air-carriers/ https://www.airlines.org/dataset/safety-record-of-u-s-air-ca... [3] https://www.airlines.org/dataset/safety-record-of-u-s-air-carriers/ https://www.airlines.org/dataset/safety-record-of-u-s-air-ca...
- xahrepap 3y ago
  My point is: the wall blew out. That’s never happened before. We should not allow this to be okay because no one died this time. Overall statistics improving doesn’t mean you have permission to start throwing a random person off the plane every year. There’s an xkcd about an online seller and a bobcat…
michaelsshaw 3y ago
If any other mode of transportation were nearly as dangerous as roadways in the US, it would be made illegal. The fact is that the 737 MAX has, by its own flaws, killed hundreds of people in recent memory. People don't want to deal with this clearly cursed line of airplanes at all.
bigfishrunning 3y ago
I also think comparing air travel to car travel is a bit unfair -- it's better to compare air travel to Bus travel (the driver has a CDL) or Train travel (The engineer is specially trained) Car fatalities likely dwarf bus and train fatalities too. It's not that airplanes are particularly safe, it's that cars are particularly unsafe.
panick21_ 3y ago
Safety in road transportation has gotten a lot worse. Specially if you don't surround yourself we a new high tech 2-tons of steel. Being fucking murder by a car when walking is way more dangerous.

DennisP 3y ago

That's true, but the question might be whether you personally should be worried if you find yourself on a 737 Max.

alrs 3y ago
The first worry as an American is having a pillar of your country's economy managed by incompetents.
- gruez 3y ago
  Sounds a lot like "yeah sure, fear over 737 Max is overblown, but the fact that I was thinking about it in the first place says something about the current state of affairs". https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/aaaah https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/aaaah
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    People are concerned because it seems irrefutable that there is corruption and a culture of cost cutting causing these issues. Incompetence is understandable, improperly modeling the physics due to lack of experience or knowledge is understandable, but repeated instances that point to corruption at the government regulator and bad culture at the manufacturer lend to fears that the situation will get worse for a while before it gets better. It’s the same reason you might avoid flying on an Eastern European/Russian airplane. The perceived risks move from unforeseeable error or bad luck to systemic error.
  - alrs 3y ago
    It sounds nothing like that. Boeing is going to lose deals because carriers don't want to deal with repeated groundings. The US economy will reflect that.
flashback2199 3y ago
It doesn't matter. Nothing will change unless enough people begin voting with their feet.
- jen20 3y ago
  Many airlines allow same day changes. If everyone scheduled on a Max reschedules for alternative flights consistently, they'll get the message soon enough. Refusing to board a Boeing plane at all is perfectly reasonable at this stage.
- dkarl 3y ago
  That's not true, and we'd get to a much, much worse place if we relied on that. The industry put the current system in place because it could see that airlines would make gruesome compromises if consumer choice was the only thing driving safety.
  - flashback2199 3y ago
    What do you mean "if", anyone can choose what plane to fly on anytime.

duxup 3y ago

> Air safety going down Is it?

psunavy03 3y ago

[citation needed]

stouset 3y ago

> safety is getting worse, not better or even staying the same The only death in US major commercial aviation in ages was when a woman was partially sucked out of a window in 2018 when an engine failed and blew apart, breaking the window open. Before that, we have the Asiana flight which crashed after landing short at SFO, striking the undercarriage on the edge of the floating platform and cartwheeling. Everyone survived the crash, but a woman was killed when a fire truck ran over her amidst the firefighting foam. Prior to that we have to go to 2005 when a plane overran a runway and hit a car, killing one occupant… of the car. We have to go all the way back to November 2001 to have a serious accident where an American plane crashed on takeoff, killing all on board. Technically this was due to pilot error due to over-responding to wake turbulence, breaking off the vertical stabilizer. But it’s arguably an engineering issue that the pilot was able to induce catastrophic structural failure through control inputs. There has definitely been a worrying trend lately in operational error with pilots and ATC nearly causing accidents due to runway incursions, nearly landing on taxiways, etc. But it’s really hard to say with a straight face that major airlines have anything other than an exemplary safety record the likes of which has been completely unparalleled before now. We have had one single death aboard a major commercial aviator in the U.S. in more than twenty two years.

flashback2199 3y ago
The only reason nobody was injured this time was nobody was sitting in the seats next to the door plug that blew off. The seat was destroyed.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- BizarreByte 3y ago
  You're missing his point entirely. People are trying to make flying out as getting more dangerous, but that's factually incorrect.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > only reason nobody was injured this time was nobody was sitting in the seats next to the door plug This was a serious fuck-up. But it remains that there was at risk no more than one, maybe two, fatalities. That isn’t enough to justify the claim that “safety is getting worse.”

legitster 3y ago

> The trend is heading the wrong way. Contrary to this sentiment, air traffic safety continues to improve: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_accidents_and_incidents#Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_accidents_and_inciden... If anything, air travel is so safe now that non-fatal incidents such as this weeks' stand out more than they would have in previous decades. And in comparison, driving is getting much more dangerous (at least in the US). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U...

not-my-account 3y ago
But, we're seeing fatal issues with one specific company over and over again. Knowing that there is some systemic failure within Boeing must change your priors, no? What's wrong with pointing that out and being concerned?
- legitster 3y ago
  I have concerns, but not enough not to fly. Everything I do in life is a calculated risk. If you told me my toaster was 3 times as likely to kill me today I would still probably toast my bread knowing that the base rate was already pretty low. If anything, knowing that all of the headline grabbing incidents has been confined to one product line at one company, and watching the amount of scrutiny they are receiving for it makes me feel safer overall.
  - nubb1nz 3y ago
    [dead]
- gruez 3y ago
  > But, we're seeing fatal issues with one specific company over and over again. Knowing that there is some systemic failure within Boeing must change your priors, no? "systemic failure within Boeing" isn't necessarily inconsistent with "air traffic safety continues to improve". For instance, better pilot training and safety regulations might make flying even safer despite Boeing creating more crashes.

yreg 3y ago

Okay, but I'm not sure fearmongering is the way to go. There are already people in this thread afraid of taking a flight in one of these machines.[0] My mother is terrified. A subthread about the actual personal risk when flying the MAX is perfectly valid. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38929336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38929336

psunavy03 3y ago
> My mother is terrified. This is more or less equivalent to the little old lady in this comic saying "I'm wearing this to ward off A." Laypeople are notoriously crap at judging any kind of risk. https://phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd051809s.gif https://phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd051809s.gif

jmward01 3y ago

That is a big statement. Since 2019 there have been 32 fatalities connected to commercial aircraft. Most of those were iv very small aircraft like seaplanes and helicopters. 32 deaths in 4 years compared to ~40k/year in cars. We need to keep things in perspective.

omikun 3y ago
To keep things in perspective we should compare fatalities per person trips or person miles. Total deaths doesn't mean as much when a lot more people travel by car.
- stouset 3y ago
  We do, and there has been one death due to an incident on a major U.S. airline since November 2001. You can maybe argue two, where a woman was killed after exiting an Asiana plane after it crashed at SFO. She was hit by an emergency vehicle responding to the scene.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    Asiana is not in the set of "major US airlines". Separately, major US airlines can reliably fly a daytime visual approach with a fully working airplane into a major airport.
- hardcopy 3y ago
  eh. To a certain extent you should compare based on distance traveled, maybe. But total miles driven in the USA are quite high compared to other countries. Lots of driving simply doesn't need to happen, but occurs because we induce it by the way we design the places where we build. I don't really care how safe driving is per mile, I care if I'm going to be dead at the end of the year.
ibejoeb 3y ago
Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, a MAX, crashed in 2019, killing 157 people.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> safety is getting worse Record passenger miles flown [1] with years of zero fatalities since, I believe, 2020 [2][3] refutes this hypothesis. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RPM https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RPM [2] https://www.airlines.org/dataset/safety-record-of-u-s-air-carriers/ https://www.airlines.org/dataset/safety-record-of-u-s-air-ca... [3] https://www.airlines.org/dataset/safety-record-of-u-s-air-carriers/ https://www.airlines.org/dataset/safety-record-of-u-s-air-ca...

xahrepap 3y ago
My point is: the wall blew out. That’s never happened before. We should not allow this to be okay because no one died this time. Overall statistics improving doesn’t mean you have permission to start throwing a random person off the plane every year. There’s an xkcd about an online seller and a bobcat…

michaelsshaw 3y ago

If any other mode of transportation were nearly as dangerous as roadways in the US, it would be made illegal. The fact is that the 737 MAX has, by its own flaws, killed hundreds of people in recent memory. People don't want to deal with this clearly cursed line of airplanes at all.

bigfishrunning 3y ago

I also think comparing air travel to car travel is a bit unfair -- it's better to compare air travel to Bus travel (the driver has a CDL) or Train travel (The engineer is specially trained) Car fatalities likely dwarf bus and train fatalities too. It's not that airplanes are particularly safe, it's that cars are particularly unsafe.

panick21_ 3y ago

Safety in road transportation has gotten a lot worse. Specially if you don't surround yourself we a new high tech 2-tons of steel. Being fucking murder by a car when walking is way more dangerous.