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Come on... How many times has that happened on a car? It has to be an exceedingly small number if it has ever happened. I wonder how much of the paint would ha

Come on... How many times has that happened on a car? It has to be an exceedingly small number if it has ever happened. I wonder how much of the paint would have to chip off to clog an air filter to the point of interfering with operation. Let alone an aircraft where they literally shoot frozen turkeys from cannons into engines to test for bird strike resilience as part of the certification process. Point is these recent events are unacceptable but the fact remains there hasn't been a single commercial aviation fatality in the US since 2009. Alaska/Boeing/etc got lucky that there wasn't anyone seated in the two adjacent seats but even then two deaths in 14 years would be an extremely impressive record, and there's no way to know if it would have resulted in death anyway. A lot of these aviation threads turn into "peak HN" (like this exchange). I don't blindly trust authorities but maybe, just maybe, we should consider that tens of billions of people-flights (made up a metric) have taken place over the past 14 years without a single fatality so the industry clearly knows what they're doing and takes safety seriously. You can put that safety record up against anything and it comes out ahead by an extremely wide margin. 250k people in the US die every year from medical errors, as one example.

altairprime 3y ago
A single car incident threatens a handful of lives. An airplane incident threatens a hundred times that, and on top of that, flying is suspicious and fearful to much of humanity to this day. Humans are superstitious, and so paint chips on a plane matter far more to passengers than paint chips on a car. Whether that’s sensible or not is an interesting discussion, but from a pragmatic standpoint, it’s a real and serious concern in airline travel.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  That's not the only reason though, like I said issues in the air are a big problem. Because you can't just stop and get out. Even on a small airplane with only 2 seats maintenance is regulated a lot more than on cars (you can't use parts without the whole certification trail) and accidents are investigated very thorougly. At least here in Europe, not sure about US.
wkat4242 3y ago
> Let alone an aircraft where they literally shoot frozen turkeys from cannons into engines to test for bird strike resilience as part of the certification process. Yes turkeys but not paint chips. Remember when engines were catching ashes from the Iceland eruption that started to glassify inside the combustion chamber? What happens with accumulated remains of paint chips, we just don't know. Because that's not something that's tested for. It'll have to be a lot of them to matter I'm sure, but some planes are pretty crazily chipping like the A350 was in Qatar. But the paint chips were just an example. A plane was brought down just by hosing it down with water before takeoff a little bit too close: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/painted-into-a-corner-the-crash-of-xl-airways-germany-flight-888t-04257538ac3b https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/painted-into-a-corner-th... > Point is these recent events are unacceptable but the fact remains there hasn't been a single commercial aviation fatality in the US since 2009. The 737MAX disasters were a matter of time. It was pure chance that they didn't happen in the US. The US is not safer here, just luckier. Despite Boeing trying to spin it on "those careless foreign operators". In fact the reason MCAS was hidden so much was the insistence of American operators that no new training should be necessary. > A lot of these aviation threads turn into "peak HN" (like this exchange). I don't blindly trust authorities but maybe, I do trust the authorities, as long as they don't delegate trust to the industry. Because I don't trust the industry. > so the industry clearly knows what they're doing and takes safety seriously. Did you really not follow what Boeing did with MCAS? The first accident was perhaps an oversight, perhaps they really didn't realise what could happen when a sensor failure brought MCAS to pitch down constantly. Not revealing this clearly which would have prevented the second crash was pretty criminal in my opinion.
- kkielhofner 3y ago
  > Yes turkeys but not paint chips. Remember when engines were catching ashes from the Iceland eruption that started to glassify inside the combustion chamber? You're able to specifically recall and cite these more-or-less freak occurrences /because/ they are so rare. You're talking about an incident from > 13 years ago[0] and again - no one died. Show me deaths from paint chips, volcanos, or any other potential risk. How many times a day do you nearly get killed in a car - you're a split second roll of the dice away from getting killed in a car every single day - which is much more common of course. As they say "close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades". > The 737MAX disasters were a matter of time. It was pure chance that they didn't happen in the US. The US is not safer here, just luckier. Despite Boeing trying to spin it on "those careless foreign operators". Of course I followed the MCAS debacle but again, zooming out we're still talking about 346 total fatalities (worldwide) across two incidents that were 3-4 years ago. Using my medical errors comparison that's equivalent to roughly nine hours of deaths due to medical errors - in the US alone. All day, every day. In the time since the MCAS incidents which were riveting, worldwide news roughly 1m people have died from medical errors in the US. Look at any other category of accidental death where the risk applies to a broad population. Nothing comes close to commercial aviation. I don't mean to sound callous and reduce these deaths to statistics. If it were a friend or family member of mine I would feel very different but the stats are what they are and commercial aviation has an extremely impressive safety record. We can care about multiple things simultaneously and Boeing (along with increasingly misplaced "trust" in them on the part of regulators) needs to get it together but speaking personally I feel safer on a plane than I do walking the streets of large cities (the murder rate in Chicago alone was nearly 2x MAX crashes last year alone), driving a car, visiting a hospital, or any other number of activities because the stats show it to be. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_travel_disruption_after_the_2010_Eyjafjallaj%C3%B6kull_eruption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_travel_disruption_after_th...
stef25 3y ago
If a plane crashes cause of some freak event, I can live with that If a plane crashes cause some guy forgot to tighten some bolts then I can't live with that because it basically means can't trust the plane. A car crash is over in a split second, you mostly don't even realise it's happening. A plane crash takes excruciating long, no thanks.
sokoloff 3y ago
> the fact remains there hasn't been a single commercial aviation fatality in the US since 2009 SWA1380 was in 2018 and resulted in a passenger fatality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1380 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1380 > where they literally shoot frozen turkeys from cannons into engines to test for bird strike resilience The bird strike testing uses thawed birds. There's a joke where the punchline is they were using frozen birds.
- kkielhofner 3y ago
  > SWA1380 was in 2018 and resulted in a passenger fatality: I stand corrected: 1 single fatality from over five years ago across billions of people-flights. Doesn't change the point in the slightest and as I said elsewhere, these incidents are so rare people can recall and reference them specifically as you just did. Other than a major celebrity dying that doesn't happen with any other single death incident. > The bird strike testing uses thawed birds. Thanks, again corrected (not trying to be snarky, I like knowing when I'm wrong). Point still stands in replying to someone talking about paint chips.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    Indeed. The amount of paint that could possibly be ingested is minuscule, especially as compared to the amount of volcanic ash that could be flown through.

altairprime 3y ago

A single car incident threatens a handful of lives. An airplane incident threatens a hundred times that, and on top of that, flying is suspicious and fearful to much of humanity to this day. Humans are superstitious, and so paint chips on a plane matter far more to passengers than paint chips on a car. Whether that’s sensible or not is an interesting discussion, but from a pragmatic standpoint, it’s a real and serious concern in airline travel.

wkat4242 3y ago
That's not the only reason though, like I said issues in the air are a big problem. Because you can't just stop and get out. Even on a small airplane with only 2 seats maintenance is regulated a lot more than on cars (you can't use parts without the whole certification trail) and accidents are investigated very thorougly. At least here in Europe, not sure about US.

wkat4242 3y ago

> Let alone an aircraft where they literally shoot frozen turkeys from cannons into engines to test for bird strike resilience as part of the certification process. Yes turkeys but not paint chips. Remember when engines were catching ashes from the Iceland eruption that started to glassify inside the combustion chamber? What happens with accumulated remains of paint chips, we just don't know. Because that's not something that's tested for. It'll have to be a lot of them to matter I'm sure, but some planes are pretty crazily chipping like the A350 was in Qatar. But the paint chips were just an example. A plane was brought down just by hosing it down with water before takeoff a little bit too close: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/painted-into-a-corner-the-crash-of-xl-airways-germany-flight-888t-04257538ac3b https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/painted-into-a-corner-th... > Point is these recent events are unacceptable but the fact remains there hasn't been a single commercial aviation fatality in the US since 2009. The 737MAX disasters were a matter of time. It was pure chance that they didn't happen in the US. The US is not safer here, just luckier. Despite Boeing trying to spin it on "those careless foreign operators". In fact the reason MCAS was hidden so much was the insistence of American operators that no new training should be necessary. > A lot of these aviation threads turn into "peak HN" (like this exchange). I don't blindly trust authorities but maybe, I do trust the authorities, as long as they don't delegate trust to the industry. Because I don't trust the industry. > so the industry clearly knows what they're doing and takes safety seriously. Did you really not follow what Boeing did with MCAS? The first accident was perhaps an oversight, perhaps they really didn't realise what could happen when a sensor failure brought MCAS to pitch down constantly. Not revealing this clearly which would have prevented the second crash was pretty criminal in my opinion.

kkielhofner 3y ago
> Yes turkeys but not paint chips. Remember when engines were catching ashes from the Iceland eruption that started to glassify inside the combustion chamber? You're able to specifically recall and cite these more-or-less freak occurrences /because/ they are so rare. You're talking about an incident from > 13 years ago[0] and again - no one died. Show me deaths from paint chips, volcanos, or any other potential risk. How many times a day do you nearly get killed in a car - you're a split second roll of the dice away from getting killed in a car every single day - which is much more common of course. As they say "close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades". > The 737MAX disasters were a matter of time. It was pure chance that they didn't happen in the US. The US is not safer here, just luckier. Despite Boeing trying to spin it on "those careless foreign operators". Of course I followed the MCAS debacle but again, zooming out we're still talking about 346 total fatalities (worldwide) across two incidents that were 3-4 years ago. Using my medical errors comparison that's equivalent to roughly nine hours of deaths due to medical errors - in the US alone. All day, every day. In the time since the MCAS incidents which were riveting, worldwide news roughly 1m people have died from medical errors in the US. Look at any other category of accidental death where the risk applies to a broad population. Nothing comes close to commercial aviation. I don't mean to sound callous and reduce these deaths to statistics. If it were a friend or family member of mine I would feel very different but the stats are what they are and commercial aviation has an extremely impressive safety record. We can care about multiple things simultaneously and Boeing (along with increasingly misplaced "trust" in them on the part of regulators) needs to get it together but speaking personally I feel safer on a plane than I do walking the streets of large cities (the murder rate in Chicago alone was nearly 2x MAX crashes last year alone), driving a car, visiting a hospital, or any other number of activities because the stats show it to be. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_travel_disruption_after_the_2010_Eyjafjallaj%C3%B6kull_eruption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_travel_disruption_after_th...

stef25 3y ago

If a plane crashes cause of some freak event, I can live with that If a plane crashes cause some guy forgot to tighten some bolts then I can't live with that because it basically means can't trust the plane. A car crash is over in a split second, you mostly don't even realise it's happening. A plane crash takes excruciating long, no thanks.

sokoloff 3y ago

> the fact remains there hasn't been a single commercial aviation fatality in the US since 2009 SWA1380 was in 2018 and resulted in a passenger fatality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1380 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1380 > where they literally shoot frozen turkeys from cannons into engines to test for bird strike resilience The bird strike testing uses thawed birds. There's a joke where the punchline is they were using frozen birds.

kkielhofner 3y ago
> SWA1380 was in 2018 and resulted in a passenger fatality: I stand corrected: 1 single fatality from over five years ago across billions of people-flights. Doesn't change the point in the slightest and as I said elsewhere, these incidents are so rare people can recall and reference them specifically as you just did. Other than a major celebrity dying that doesn't happen with any other single death incident. > The bird strike testing uses thawed birds. Thanks, again corrected (not trying to be snarky, I like knowing when I'm wrong). Point still stands in replying to someone talking about paint chips.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  Indeed. The amount of paint that could possibly be ingested is minuscule, especially as compared to the amount of volcanic ash that could be flown through.