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I don’t think it makes sense for passengers to worry about the plane model. I haven’t done the math but conceptually it’s like being paranoid about taking plane

by cm2187 3y ago

I don’t think it makes sense for passengers to worry about the plane model. I haven’t done the math but conceptually it’s like being paranoid about taking plane A that has a 99.99998 safety vs plane B that has a 99.99999 safety. For the crew, things are a little different given that they are all day long, all year long in the same plane model, so those minuscule risks compound. People are bad at conceptualising low probabilities. That’s why they play lottery!

light_hue_1 3y ago
Of course it makes sense to avoid the 737 MAX. Both at an individual and at a population level. Someone has to win the lottery and it could be you. The fact that the probability isn't high doesn't matter when you're dying because Boeing wanted to make an extra dollar. It also makes sense at the population level. It's clear that Congress and the FAA are not capable of overseeing Boeing. And they're too big to even stumble now, never mind fail. The solution is for consumers to punish them. That will get them to fix their problems ASAP.
- dangus 3y ago
  This whole hubbub is hilarious to me. People are so bad at statistics. You know who else self-certifies their safety? Car companies. 30,000+ people die every year in car crashes in the US but that’s totally fine. (Of course I am well aware of various car company safety scandals where profit was placed above safety). With US airline travel you have to go back multiple years before you find a single flight-related death on a mainstream commercial jet. Meanwhile everyone I know seems to refuse public transit to the airport because of the “crackheads” and “homeless people” even though their car is way more dangerous than those supposed threats. I have to beg people I travel with to stop assuming that a taxi is going to be a better experience than a train or even a bus. The fact that most Americans are against abolishing the 2nd amendment is also another piece of statistical ignorance. It’s such a no-brainer win on public safety but everyone is drunk on their revolutionary war propaganda from when guns didn’t even have the modern concept of bullets. You’re wildly more statistically likely to be shot by a police officer in the US than to be shot by an actual criminal in the UK because that’s how dumb enshrining the rights of killing appliances into a constitution is. I’m all for the customer’s power to boycott, but the actual solution that will save lives is for the government and the FAA to tighten regulations and be more thorough. For a plane type filter I’d personally use it more for comfort or perhaps CO2 emissions preferences and not safety.
  - swader999 3y ago
    Safety stats are lagging indicators.
  - mattmaroon 3y ago
    For a piece criticizing people for being dumb you get a lot mixed up. Car companies don’t certify their own safety, they have to send them in to the government to be crash tested. Car deaths don’t happen (much) because of mechanical failures, they happen because of crashes. They don’t self-certify their crashworthiness. Most people don’t live somewhere where there’s a subway to the airport in the USA. You can count on one hand (and probably have multiple fingers left over) the number of cities where you have that option. For most people a bus adds significant time to their trip. I can take a 30 minute Uber whenever I want or a God-only-knows-how-long bus ride. Even if it weren’t for the mentally ill (but mostly harmless) passengers, a taxi is in every way a better experience than a bus, and still negligible risk, it just costs more. Even if we could abolish the second amendment that still leaves over 300 million guns here, and this may surprise you but people also sell things illegally. The problem isn’t the law, it’s that people want guns.
    - dangus 3y ago
      There wouldn’t be 300 million guns in citizens’ hands without the law existing in the first place. That’s why the law is dumb. Laws can be changed. There’s no obligation to double down on them. We don’t keep lead pipes legal just because it’s very costly and time-intensive to replace all of them. That’s only an argument to start sooner rather than later. Guns would be a cakewalk to take off the streets compared to lead pipes. For one thing, guns need a consumable to function at all (ammunition). Yes, car makers self-certify. You are not correct about that. Government crash tests aren’t a prerequisite to being allowed to sell a vehicle. Example source: https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/some-cars-will-never-be-crash-tested-crash-test-ratings/ https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/some-cars-will-ne... You can also ask ChatGPT if you want. And then here we go with the carbrain argument “the only option is cars, America is set up for cars.” That was and continues to be an intentional choice. It is not irreversible. It is not something that we are forced to double down on just because that’s been our choice so far. Every time a road is built or a highway is widened that’s an intentional choice that is no less intentional or costly than sending the money toward transit options or pedestrian/cycling infrastructure. The Netherlands had this exact same problem in the 70s and reversed it. Something like 90% of daily trips are under 5 miles, which is less than 30 minutes on a bike. The Netherlands has zero cities that are as populous as the top 10 most populous American cities. “The bus adds significant time” but that’s the thing that people say who never take the bus. Can you work on your laptop while you drive? Can you read while you drive? I can do that on the bus. Sounds like I get time back, and my ride is statistically 10x safer. Also, when it comes to large urban areas, you have to remember that most people live in them. That’s why they’re large urban areas. A New Yorker who never drives anywhere isn't someone who “doesn’t count” because they live in New York and it’s an anomaly. More of America depends on public transit than you think.
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  >>when you're dying because Boeing wanted to make an extra dollar. I think it is naive and dangerous to simply blame profit motive for the problems at Boeing, Profit has always been goal at Boeing, and I assume is also a goal of Airbus and every other manufacturer. So if something has changed recently maybe one should look at other corporate priorities that have in reality supplanted profit as the number one goal for many corporations. In fact Maybe a return to profit motive is what we need to resolve the problems
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    So, you could certainly argue that the Max is a result of a fixation on _short-term_ profit; it was arguably an attempt to push an existing design maybe a bit too far, rather than taking the short-term hit and designing a modern competitive plane in the size category. The trouble with that is, the payoff period is longer, so if the decision makers are overly fixated on “number goes up”, well.
    - barbazoo 3y ago
      I doubt the door bolts issue has anything to do with the type rating hack they did.
  - throwaway222577 3y ago
    Boeing’s problem does have to do with making an extra dollar at the expense of other concerns. “Why is Boeing such a shitty corporation?” —- https://robertreich.substack.com/p/why-is-boeing-such-a-shitty-corporation https://robertreich.substack.com/p/why-is-boeing-such-a-shit...
    - phpisthebest 3y ago
      First off, I reject outright everything coming from Robert Reich but I digress... There are some big problems here, first and foremost the idea that because Airbus is owned by governments that makes it some how better. Also they seem to not understand that "Boeing’s four largest shareholders" being Vanguard, and State Street means most likely Boeing largest Shareholders are peoples 40K's and IRA's. Meaning everyday middle class American's Nothing in this standard Reich diatribe against capitalism, in favor of socialist utopia of Workers Unions would solve all problems accurately identifies the actual problems at Boeing I was talking about in my parent comment. Boeing being owned by Vanguard is a problem, but not because Vangaurd seeks to maximize profits, infact in recent years so called "Stakeholder Capitalism" which I believe Reich is also a proponent of has taken over Vangaurd and even more so Black Rock which puts a whole host of things over profits, and IMO this "Stakeholder Capitalism" is the root cause of the problem. It is a cancer in Business.
stbenjam 3y ago
I’m sure it’s to exclude the MAX but I like it so I can find specific planes I want to fly. The old narrow/wide body filter wasn’t granular enough.
- maccard 3y ago
  Agreed. I fly between the UK and US a few times a year, and if I could filter by expected plane type for comfort on an 11 hour flight, I would.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    I don't do a hard filter up-front, but for longer flights, I'll definitely look at plane type and seating availability before I book if there are reasonable options (for comfort reasons).
TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
It's the only tool or mechanism available to regular consumers by which they can vote with their wallets. If you're unhappy with how Boeing has been handling their business in recent years, this is the most amount of influence a regular person can exert. Even if your individual risk is miniscule, it serves as a tool to signal discontent.
- DrNosferatu 3y ago
  Indeed. But, don’t forget you can vote with your political vote - or even better - with civic participation: this is the most effective way to make change happen.
- awhitby 3y ago
  They can vote with their vote too. If regulators do their job, grounded airplanes start to become quite a large expense for airlines and influence their fleet choices.
stringsandchars 3y ago
> I don’t think it makes sense for passengers to worry about the plane model. Why do you think we should surrender the tiny amount of agency that we still have, in the face of corporate profit-driven deterioration? For me, this isn't about a measured risk in relation to other known risks in my life (crossing the road, cycling, drinking alcohol). It's about removing a totally unnecessary risk caused by greed and corporate heedlessness. A similar case: I stopped eating British Beef when a British minister fed his daughter a beefburger[0] to 'prove' it was "totally safe", during the 'Mad Cow Disease' (BSE) crisis in 1990. I wasn't significantly worried about contracting BSE at the time, but the lengths and efforts that the government went to, to convince people to eat more beef for 'patriotic' reasons, when the farmers had fed their cows on ground-up carcasses for economic gain, meant that my boycott was a small but meaningful expression of my own agency when faced by this sort of appalling behavior. I feel the same way about Boeing, and about the greed of airlines (like RyanAir), that think only about profit and see passenger safety as an irritating distraction that is only important in terms of 'brand perception'. [0] https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/bse-crisis-john-selywn-gummer-2122969 https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/bse-crisis-john-se...
- cm2187 3y ago
  You may choose to not fly on a boeing plane for political reasons. But if you are concerned about risk, it’s not about comparing the risk of a flight in Max vs riding a bicycle. It’s about a flight in Max vs say, an A320. What I am saying is that those respective risks are so tiny that they are immaterial, and not worth worrying about. If you want to spend energy making your trip safer, you should worry much more about what car model will drive you to or from the airport, or level of crime in public transports, etc.
  - the_mitsuhiko 3y ago
    > You may choose to not fly on a boeing plane for political reasons These are not political reasons. I'm for many years now trying to avoid flying on the 737 MAX and 787. Not because I dislike the planes even as a passenger, or because I worry about crashing, or because I have a political agenda. I want to use the little bit of voting with the wallet I have. This is the core of how our system works. I understand that in the grand scheme of things this is not really doing anything, but if a sufficient number of people make airlines uncomfortable they will increase the pressure on Boeing to improve their processes. The current duopoly/monopoly on aircraft manufacturers is preventing innovation in the space and I do not appreciate this a single bit.
ReptileMan 3y ago
>I haven’t done the math but conceptually it’s like being paranoid about taking plane A that has a 99.99998 safety vs plane B that has a 99.99999 safety. That is literally twice as dangerous.
- glimshe 3y ago
  The point is that you will still not win the lottery if you buy two tickets.
  - PedroBatista 3y ago
    It’s because of that type of sentiment that Boeing has been doing what they have been doing. Until one day you close the bedroom door 5% harder than usual and the whole house collapses.
    - inkcapmushroom 3y ago
      Exactly, it's not about the marginal increase in risk today, it's about fighting the culture of enshittification the only way you can, with your wallet.
  - gcanyon 3y ago
    I love this analogy, thanks!
- D_Alex 3y ago
  Actually... 737 MAX is roughly 30 times as dangerous as the other planes in its category (eg. A320). Source: https://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm https://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm
  - kube-system 3y ago
    Every MAX flying now has had updates made to address the two events captured in those statistics, so those stats capture something different than today’s reality.
ldoughty 3y ago
I agree that people are bad with probability like you explain However, I think the issue with the 737 MAX is that it's been involved in several high profile catastrophic mistakes while only being in service for a few years. It's expected that a page in service for 20 years might have wear and tear that leads to issues... But brand new planes crashing back to back shortly after being released.. The stats on the Wikipedia page state that the MAX has 4 fatalities per 1 million flights, while the prior generation has 0.2 fatalities per million flights [1]. Of course, some if this is due to the two crashes right out the door, and if excluded, perhaps they are similar... But then this new door blowout issue occured... And after investigation multiple planes had the same issue (so it likely is a production issue, not an individual worker screwing up one time). Overall I agree plane model should mean little to travelers... But the MAX is trying very hard to prove it's a lemon. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX
- dangus 3y ago
  Not to defend Boeing since the circumstances of the MCAS controversy didn’t involve honest well-intentioned design mistakes, but I would argue that reliability is a bathtub curve so a new plane model having more issues is expected.
  - deleted 3y ago
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- lxgr 3y ago
  A 20-year old plane is probably safer than one fresh off the assembly line, given how long they are usually in service: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  > several high profile catastrophic mistakes while only being in service for a few years This is absolutely typical. Problems shake out in the first few years of a new model. This isn't to excuse any failures on the part of Boeing or their subcontractors, but we see the same pattern in software, vehicles, or any other complicated products.
trabant00 3y ago
Not only that but the crew is much more informed and qualified to make a decision and it's their life on the line as well. There will always be incidents no matter how rare, investigations will always show that the something could have been done better because nothing can be done perfect, the press will always inflame the public and the public will want to have an opinion/decision no matter how out uninformed.
figassis 3y ago
I think being unreasonably pissed about certain things is good because it provides some randomness/wildcard behavior for those who enjoy modeling the masses behavior for profit, and think making mistakes is only about the numbers. Some things should have a high cost just because.
deleted 3y ago
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Havoc 3y ago
> People are bad at conceptualising low probabilities. Speaking of which - the probabilities are exactly the same for passengers as cabin crew and there is no compounding effect :p Number of times you roll the dicey has no effect on probabilities and thus no impact on whether make sense. I’m not doing this often this can swallow more risk is very human thinking
- cm2187 3y ago
  Only if you want to meaure the number of times you die on average. But you typically want to measure the risk of dying once over a career as a crew, and that is very much a function of how many times you roll the dice. Your probability of survival is 1-(prob of no crash per flight)^(flight count), and it is not linear. Whereas a passenger plays the game many less times. If you don't take my made up numbers but wikipedia [1], and if I get my math right, B737 max has 4 accidents per millions flights, vs 0.2 for previous B737. That means that over a career of 15 years, working 200 days per year, 3 flights a day, a crew has a chance of dying of 3.54% with the Max vs 0.18% for the older models. 0.18% might be non material but 3.54% starts to be significant. (a passenger that takes 10 B737 max flights a year over that period only has a 0.06% probability to die). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX#Accidents_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX#Accidents_and_i...
- ammasant 3y ago
  If two people perform an action with 1/10,000 chance of death, but person A performs it once per year and person B performs it 10,000 times per year, whose life is more heavily dependent on the underlying fatality rate of the action?
  - drc500free 3y ago
    See also - vending machines kill more people than sharks do.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
cascom 3y ago
If people want to exercise choice - by all means, and I’m happy at the margin to punish Boeing, but I agree from a personal risk standpoint it’s probably inconsequential. I’m always amazed at where people spend energy mitigating risk, I had a coworker who was worried about taking the Covid vaccine but was hardly the picture of health and rode a motorcycle to work many days - it’s like putting down the beer, eating a salad, and taking the bus will give you massive gains in life expectancy vs some minor unknown delta with the Covid vaccine, but to each their own. I just wish we could get people to use micromorts (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort)
- simmerup 3y ago
  I think if you zoom out you’ll realise that none of us actually know much about risk of things we’re doing. Like there’s a hundred ways changing your diet could harm you rather than help even if you think you’re reducing your risk.
  - cascom 3y ago
    I don’t disagree, but I'm also not talking about debating a Mediterranean diet vs keto, I’m talking about cutting out fast food and big gulps…
- ejb999 3y ago
  my favorite was watching people - riding a bike in traffic without a helmet - but wearing a mask (even when not required by law). Talk about not understanding risk.
lamontcg 3y ago
I don't care as much about the immediate risks as I care about punishing Boeing for their management culture -- and I don't care about the model as much as the Airbus/Boeing tilt of the carrier I'm booking with. This does mean that this utility isn't really that useful, though, and its simpler to just book with e.g. Delta over Alaska.
marcosdumay 3y ago
Your "plane A" number is off by an order of magnitude. The "plane B" number is about right. Now you will certainly find it interesting to look at the safety profile of your other activities. And estimate repeating those risks through your life. That order of magnitude makes all the difference in the world.
JCharante 3y ago
I think about plane models when it comes to comfort. I always prefer A350s over 787s, always prefer A320s over the 737 family because of the 737 family's more narrow cabin. I genuinely don't like flying on Boeing planes.
elyall 3y ago
An alternative use case: on a long flight I would prefer to fly on a 787 or A350 as these composite aircraft maintain higher cabin humidity and pressure which is easier on the body.
standardUser 3y ago
I am not concerned about safety, but I am concerned about seating layout. Some airlines, particularly United and American, use incredibly tight seat configurations that are a bridge too far for most other airlines. Getting stuck on those particular planes have been among my worst flight experiences. Now I just try to avoid those carriers, but all I really want are to avoid those seat configurations. In general, the more consumer knowledge the better. You may not know why I care and you may not think it matters, but how about just letting me decide anyway? I think the same goes for food labelling, country of origin, labor conditions and so on. We allow companies an insane degree of secrecy.

by cm2187 3y ago

light_hue_1 3y ago

Of course it makes sense to avoid the 737 MAX. Both at an individual and at a population level. Someone has to win the lottery and it could be you. The fact that the probability isn't high doesn't matter when you're dying because Boeing wanted to make an extra dollar. It also makes sense at the population level. It's clear that Congress and the FAA are not capable of overseeing Boeing. And they're too big to even stumble now, never mind fail. The solution is for consumers to punish them. That will get them to fix their problems ASAP.

dangus 3y ago
This whole hubbub is hilarious to me. People are so bad at statistics. You know who else self-certifies their safety? Car companies. 30,000+ people die every year in car crashes in the US but that’s totally fine. (Of course I am well aware of various car company safety scandals where profit was placed above safety). With US airline travel you have to go back multiple years before you find a single flight-related death on a mainstream commercial jet. Meanwhile everyone I know seems to refuse public transit to the airport because of the “crackheads” and “homeless people” even though their car is way more dangerous than those supposed threats. I have to beg people I travel with to stop assuming that a taxi is going to be a better experience than a train or even a bus. The fact that most Americans are against abolishing the 2nd amendment is also another piece of statistical ignorance. It’s such a no-brainer win on public safety but everyone is drunk on their revolutionary war propaganda from when guns didn’t even have the modern concept of bullets. You’re wildly more statistically likely to be shot by a police officer in the US than to be shot by an actual criminal in the UK because that’s how dumb enshrining the rights of killing appliances into a constitution is. I’m all for the customer’s power to boycott, but the actual solution that will save lives is for the government and the FAA to tighten regulations and be more thorough. For a plane type filter I’d personally use it more for comfort or perhaps CO2 emissions preferences and not safety.
- swader999 3y ago
  Safety stats are lagging indicators.
- mattmaroon 3y ago
  For a piece criticizing people for being dumb you get a lot mixed up. Car companies don’t certify their own safety, they have to send them in to the government to be crash tested. Car deaths don’t happen (much) because of mechanical failures, they happen because of crashes. They don’t self-certify their crashworthiness. Most people don’t live somewhere where there’s a subway to the airport in the USA. You can count on one hand (and probably have multiple fingers left over) the number of cities where you have that option. For most people a bus adds significant time to their trip. I can take a 30 minute Uber whenever I want or a God-only-knows-how-long bus ride. Even if it weren’t for the mentally ill (but mostly harmless) passengers, a taxi is in every way a better experience than a bus, and still negligible risk, it just costs more. Even if we could abolish the second amendment that still leaves over 300 million guns here, and this may surprise you but people also sell things illegally. The problem isn’t the law, it’s that people want guns.
  - dangus 3y ago
    There wouldn’t be 300 million guns in citizens’ hands without the law existing in the first place. That’s why the law is dumb. Laws can be changed. There’s no obligation to double down on them. We don’t keep lead pipes legal just because it’s very costly and time-intensive to replace all of them. That’s only an argument to start sooner rather than later. Guns would be a cakewalk to take off the streets compared to lead pipes. For one thing, guns need a consumable to function at all (ammunition). Yes, car makers self-certify. You are not correct about that. Government crash tests aren’t a prerequisite to being allowed to sell a vehicle. Example source: https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/some-cars-will-never-be-crash-tested-crash-test-ratings/ https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/some-cars-will-ne... You can also ask ChatGPT if you want. And then here we go with the carbrain argument “the only option is cars, America is set up for cars.” That was and continues to be an intentional choice. It is not irreversible. It is not something that we are forced to double down on just because that’s been our choice so far. Every time a road is built or a highway is widened that’s an intentional choice that is no less intentional or costly than sending the money toward transit options or pedestrian/cycling infrastructure. The Netherlands had this exact same problem in the 70s and reversed it. Something like 90% of daily trips are under 5 miles, which is less than 30 minutes on a bike. The Netherlands has zero cities that are as populous as the top 10 most populous American cities. “The bus adds significant time” but that’s the thing that people say who never take the bus. Can you work on your laptop while you drive? Can you read while you drive? I can do that on the bus. Sounds like I get time back, and my ride is statistically 10x safer. Also, when it comes to large urban areas, you have to remember that most people live in them. That’s why they’re large urban areas. A New Yorker who never drives anywhere isn't someone who “doesn’t count” because they live in New York and it’s an anomaly. More of America depends on public transit than you think.
phpisthebest 3y ago
>>when you're dying because Boeing wanted to make an extra dollar. I think it is naive and dangerous to simply blame profit motive for the problems at Boeing, Profit has always been goal at Boeing, and I assume is also a goal of Airbus and every other manufacturer. So if something has changed recently maybe one should look at other corporate priorities that have in reality supplanted profit as the number one goal for many corporations. In fact Maybe a return to profit motive is what we need to resolve the problems
- rsynnott 3y ago
  So, you could certainly argue that the Max is a result of a fixation on _short-term_ profit; it was arguably an attempt to push an existing design maybe a bit too far, rather than taking the short-term hit and designing a modern competitive plane in the size category. The trouble with that is, the payoff period is longer, so if the decision makers are overly fixated on “number goes up”, well.
  - barbazoo 3y ago
    I doubt the door bolts issue has anything to do with the type rating hack they did.
- throwaway222577 3y ago
  Boeing’s problem does have to do with making an extra dollar at the expense of other concerns. “Why is Boeing such a shitty corporation?” —- https://robertreich.substack.com/p/why-is-boeing-such-a-shitty-corporation https://robertreich.substack.com/p/why-is-boeing-such-a-shit...
  - phpisthebest 3y ago
    First off, I reject outright everything coming from Robert Reich but I digress... There are some big problems here, first and foremost the idea that because Airbus is owned by governments that makes it some how better. Also they seem to not understand that "Boeing’s four largest shareholders" being Vanguard, and State Street means most likely Boeing largest Shareholders are peoples 40K's and IRA's. Meaning everyday middle class American's Nothing in this standard Reich diatribe against capitalism, in favor of socialist utopia of Workers Unions would solve all problems accurately identifies the actual problems at Boeing I was talking about in my parent comment. Boeing being owned by Vanguard is a problem, but not because Vangaurd seeks to maximize profits, infact in recent years so called "Stakeholder Capitalism" which I believe Reich is also a proponent of has taken over Vangaurd and even more so Black Rock which puts a whole host of things over profits, and IMO this "Stakeholder Capitalism" is the root cause of the problem. It is a cancer in Business.

stbenjam 3y ago

I’m sure it’s to exclude the MAX but I like it so I can find specific planes I want to fly. The old narrow/wide body filter wasn’t granular enough.

maccard 3y ago
Agreed. I fly between the UK and US a few times a year, and if I could filter by expected plane type for comfort on an 11 hour flight, I would.
- ghaff 3y ago
  I don't do a hard filter up-front, but for longer flights, I'll definitely look at plane type and seating availability before I book if there are reasonable options (for comfort reasons).

TheAceOfHearts 3y ago

It's the only tool or mechanism available to regular consumers by which they can vote with their wallets. If you're unhappy with how Boeing has been handling their business in recent years, this is the most amount of influence a regular person can exert. Even if your individual risk is miniscule, it serves as a tool to signal discontent.

DrNosferatu 3y ago
Indeed. But, don’t forget you can vote with your political vote - or even better - with civic participation: this is the most effective way to make change happen.
awhitby 3y ago
They can vote with their vote too. If regulators do their job, grounded airplanes start to become quite a large expense for airlines and influence their fleet choices.

stringsandchars 3y ago

> I don’t think it makes sense for passengers to worry about the plane model. Why do you think we should surrender the tiny amount of agency that we still have, in the face of corporate profit-driven deterioration? For me, this isn't about a measured risk in relation to other known risks in my life (crossing the road, cycling, drinking alcohol). It's about removing a totally unnecessary risk caused by greed and corporate heedlessness. A similar case: I stopped eating British Beef when a British minister fed his daughter a beefburger[0] to 'prove' it was "totally safe", during the 'Mad Cow Disease' (BSE) crisis in 1990. I wasn't significantly worried about contracting BSE at the time, but the lengths and efforts that the government went to, to convince people to eat more beef for 'patriotic' reasons, when the farmers had fed their cows on ground-up carcasses for economic gain, meant that my boycott was a small but meaningful expression of my own agency when faced by this sort of appalling behavior. I feel the same way about Boeing, and about the greed of airlines (like RyanAir), that think only about profit and see passenger safety as an irritating distraction that is only important in terms of 'brand perception'. [0] https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/bse-crisis-john-selywn-gummer-2122969 https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/bse-crisis-john-se...

cm2187 3y ago
You may choose to not fly on a boeing plane for political reasons. But if you are concerned about risk, it’s not about comparing the risk of a flight in Max vs riding a bicycle. It’s about a flight in Max vs say, an A320. What I am saying is that those respective risks are so tiny that they are immaterial, and not worth worrying about. If you want to spend energy making your trip safer, you should worry much more about what car model will drive you to or from the airport, or level of crime in public transports, etc.
- the_mitsuhiko 3y ago
  > You may choose to not fly on a boeing plane for political reasons These are not political reasons. I'm for many years now trying to avoid flying on the 737 MAX and 787. Not because I dislike the planes even as a passenger, or because I worry about crashing, or because I have a political agenda. I want to use the little bit of voting with the wallet I have. This is the core of how our system works. I understand that in the grand scheme of things this is not really doing anything, but if a sufficient number of people make airlines uncomfortable they will increase the pressure on Boeing to improve their processes. The current duopoly/monopoly on aircraft manufacturers is preventing innovation in the space and I do not appreciate this a single bit.

ReptileMan 3y ago

>I haven’t done the math but conceptually it’s like being paranoid about taking plane A that has a 99.99998 safety vs plane B that has a 99.99999 safety. That is literally twice as dangerous.

glimshe 3y ago
The point is that you will still not win the lottery if you buy two tickets.
- PedroBatista 3y ago
  It’s because of that type of sentiment that Boeing has been doing what they have been doing. Until one day you close the bedroom door 5% harder than usual and the whole house collapses.
  - inkcapmushroom 3y ago
    Exactly, it's not about the marginal increase in risk today, it's about fighting the culture of enshittification the only way you can, with your wallet.
- gcanyon 3y ago
  I love this analogy, thanks!
D_Alex 3y ago
Actually... 737 MAX is roughly 30 times as dangerous as the other planes in its category (eg. A320). Source: https://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm https://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm
- kube-system 3y ago
  Every MAX flying now has had updates made to address the two events captured in those statistics, so those stats capture something different than today’s reality.

ldoughty 3y ago

I agree that people are bad with probability like you explain However, I think the issue with the 737 MAX is that it's been involved in several high profile catastrophic mistakes while only being in service for a few years. It's expected that a page in service for 20 years might have wear and tear that leads to issues... But brand new planes crashing back to back shortly after being released.. The stats on the Wikipedia page state that the MAX has 4 fatalities per 1 million flights, while the prior generation has 0.2 fatalities per million flights [1]. Of course, some if this is due to the two crashes right out the door, and if excluded, perhaps they are similar... But then this new door blowout issue occured... And after investigation multiple planes had the same issue (so it likely is a production issue, not an individual worker screwing up one time). Overall I agree plane model should mean little to travelers... But the MAX is trying very hard to prove it's a lemon. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX

dangus 3y ago
Not to defend Boeing since the circumstances of the MCAS controversy didn’t involve honest well-intentioned design mistakes, but I would argue that reliability is a bathtub curve so a new plane model having more issues is expected.
- deleted 3y ago
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lxgr 3y ago
A 20-year old plane is probably safer than one fresh off the assembly line, given how long they are usually in service: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve
SoftTalker 3y ago
> several high profile catastrophic mistakes while only being in service for a few years This is absolutely typical. Problems shake out in the first few years of a new model. This isn't to excuse any failures on the part of Boeing or their subcontractors, but we see the same pattern in software, vehicles, or any other complicated products.

trabant00 3y ago

Not only that but the crew is much more informed and qualified to make a decision and it's their life on the line as well. There will always be incidents no matter how rare, investigations will always show that the something could have been done better because nothing can be done perfect, the press will always inflame the public and the public will want to have an opinion/decision no matter how out uninformed.

figassis 3y ago

I think being unreasonably pissed about certain things is good because it provides some randomness/wildcard behavior for those who enjoy modeling the masses behavior for profit, and think making mistakes is only about the numbers. Some things should have a high cost just because.

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Havoc 3y ago

> People are bad at conceptualising low probabilities. Speaking of which - the probabilities are exactly the same for passengers as cabin crew and there is no compounding effect :p Number of times you roll the dicey has no effect on probabilities and thus no impact on whether make sense. I’m not doing this often this can swallow more risk is very human thinking

cm2187 3y ago
Only if you want to meaure the number of times you die on average. But you typically want to measure the risk of dying once over a career as a crew, and that is very much a function of how many times you roll the dice. Your probability of survival is 1-(prob of no crash per flight)^(flight count), and it is not linear. Whereas a passenger plays the game many less times. If you don't take my made up numbers but wikipedia [1], and if I get my math right, B737 max has 4 accidents per millions flights, vs 0.2 for previous B737. That means that over a career of 15 years, working 200 days per year, 3 flights a day, a crew has a chance of dying of 3.54% with the Max vs 0.18% for the older models. 0.18% might be non material but 3.54% starts to be significant. (a passenger that takes 10 B737 max flights a year over that period only has a 0.06% probability to die). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX#Accidents_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX#Accidents_and_i...
ammasant 3y ago
If two people perform an action with 1/10,000 chance of death, but person A performs it once per year and person B performs it 10,000 times per year, whose life is more heavily dependent on the underlying fatality rate of the action?
- drc500free 3y ago
  See also - vending machines kill more people than sharks do.
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cascom 3y ago

If people want to exercise choice - by all means, and I’m happy at the margin to punish Boeing, but I agree from a personal risk standpoint it’s probably inconsequential. I’m always amazed at where people spend energy mitigating risk, I had a coworker who was worried about taking the Covid vaccine but was hardly the picture of health and rode a motorcycle to work many days - it’s like putting down the beer, eating a salad, and taking the bus will give you massive gains in life expectancy vs some minor unknown delta with the Covid vaccine, but to each their own. I just wish we could get people to use micromorts (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort)

simmerup 3y ago
I think if you zoom out you’ll realise that none of us actually know much about risk of things we’re doing. Like there’s a hundred ways changing your diet could harm you rather than help even if you think you’re reducing your risk.
- cascom 3y ago
  I don’t disagree, but I'm also not talking about debating a Mediterranean diet vs keto, I’m talking about cutting out fast food and big gulps…
ejb999 3y ago
my favorite was watching people - riding a bike in traffic without a helmet - but wearing a mask (even when not required by law). Talk about not understanding risk.

lamontcg 3y ago

I don't care as much about the immediate risks as I care about punishing Boeing for their management culture -- and I don't care about the model as much as the Airbus/Boeing tilt of the carrier I'm booking with. This does mean that this utility isn't really that useful, though, and its simpler to just book with e.g. Delta over Alaska.

marcosdumay 3y ago

Your "plane A" number is off by an order of magnitude. The "plane B" number is about right. Now you will certainly find it interesting to look at the safety profile of your other activities. And estimate repeating those risks through your life. That order of magnitude makes all the difference in the world.

JCharante 3y ago

I think about plane models when it comes to comfort. I always prefer A350s over 787s, always prefer A320s over the 737 family because of the 737 family's more narrow cabin. I genuinely don't like flying on Boeing planes.

elyall 3y ago

An alternative use case: on a long flight I would prefer to fly on a 787 or A350 as these composite aircraft maintain higher cabin humidity and pressure which is easier on the body.

standardUser 3y ago

I am not concerned about safety, but I am concerned about seating layout. Some airlines, particularly United and American, use incredibly tight seat configurations that are a bridge too far for most other airlines. Getting stuck on those particular planes have been among my worst flight experiences. Now I just try to avoid those carriers, but all I really want are to avoid those seat configurations. In general, the more consumer knowledge the better. You may not know why I care and you may not think it matters, but how about just letting me decide anyway? I think the same goes for food labelling, country of origin, labor conditions and so on. We allow companies an insane degree of secrecy.