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Yes, I mean obviously cargo ships are not well inspected, they lose power all the time and companies just hope it doesn't happen near anything important. The oi

Yes, I mean obviously cargo ships are not well inspected, they lose power all the time and companies just hope it doesn't happen near anything important. The oil industry is like this, you've got bottom-of-the-barrel tankers (https://www.amazon.com/Tankship-Tromedy-Impending-Disasters-Tankers/dp/0977647900 https://www.amazon.com/Tankship-Tromedy-Impending-Disasters-...), spills continuing for decades (https://www.propublica.org/article/chevron-will-pay-record-fines-for-california-oil-spills https://www.propublica.org/article/chevron-will-pay-record-f...), leaking methane wells permanently abandoned by "bankrupt" companies, etc. You're definitely right that we're all paying extra attention to Boeing at the moment, but if you look around I think you'll find that there actually have been pretty recent famous failures in quite a few industries.

dawnerd 2y ago
I thought ships were a little different since they can just follow the regulations of their flagged country and skirt a lot of rules.
- hunter2_ 2y ago
  With the amount of overlapping vocabulary, I would've thought airplanes are basically just ships in the sky. Ports, captains, boarding, etc. Or are these used metaphorically, like virtual computer stuff versus physical office stuff (desktop, folder, etc.) where there's enough similarity to avoid making new words but they're operated quite differently?
  - philipwhiuk 2y ago
    The need to overfly a country, vs just sail round, means that airlines need country's permission to fly into/through a country. Overflight privileges cost money. In addition protectionism has meant that you generally have to land or take off at an airport run by the flag you carry. So unlike shipping, a Malaysian airline can't fly from the US to UK. This means that airlines need to be based at their 'real' base of operations, they can't just register in a tax-shelter.
    - rob74 2y ago
      Additionally, the fact that passenger airplanes carry, well, passengers, while cargo ships don't, means that airlines are automatically under more scrutiny. Further to what you wrote, some airlines have even been blacklisted by e.g. the EU because of safety reasons, like PIA (the flag carrier of Pakistan!) from 2020 to 2023.
      - hunter2_ 2y ago
        I guess cargo tends to go more by ship and passengers tend to go more by plane, but all 4 combinations certainly exist so no need to assume 2 variables are being compared simultaneously.
- cookiengineer 2y ago
  Which is the country their rules should follow? Their flag? Their company's residency? Their production location? Guess what, all are bought and sold off for cheap on the market. Oh and they pay less than 1.5% taxes, usually, if they even pay taxes.
  - dawnerd 2y ago
    I agree it's a tricky problem to solve without agreements in place governing it. The airline industry seems to have settled on you follow the laws of the destination country. Ships in particular though do everything they can to abuse flagging their ships with the most lax working regulations.
  - paulmd 2y ago
    The union of the ruleset of the flag country, the source country, and the destination country seems pretty reasonable - you should have to follow all three. Obviously not how it’s currently done, it’s an industry that has been doing it by flagging out of places like Liberia or Mauritania since time immemorial, but we can clearly do better. If this causes conflicts that make certain flags legally incompatible with certain combinations of sources and destinations - good. Those flags-of-convenience can harmonize their rules to the rest of the world. The environment and human rights will benefit.
- noir_lord 2y ago
  (tongue in cheek) isn't that what boeing did with the FAA?
jeromegv 2y ago
Ships and planes are so different in their regulations and safety measures, it's not even close or comparable.
_heimdall 2y ago
Losing power in a ship that spends almost its entire life in the open ocean is much less risky than losing power in an airplane though. Its reasonable that expectations, regulations, and maintenance schedules differ there. I have nothing good to say for oil spills though. I was interning st Exxon's upstream research department when the BP oil spill happened in the gulf. What I heard from many people that had been there for a a long time amounted to no one being too surprised given how the industry works and how much is outsourced. They also (rightfully) expected the main concern to be PR. Exxon researchers were the ones to give BP the chemicals to coagulate the oil into globs and sink it just below the surface. They were really proud of it at the time, though having family on the Gulf Coast I was less impressed with the solution or the tar balls that washed up on the beach for years.
- spixy 2y ago
  > is much less risky well Baltimore thinks otherwise
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    My point stands in the context of the GP comment I replied to, they were pointing out how frequently container ships lose power. Baltimore was a terrible scenario with power failure at just the wrong time, but ships do regularly lose power or have mechanical issues and very rarely cause Amy damage. If a plane loses power it falls and hits whatever is below.
    - fcsp 2y ago
      I agree with you, but I would like to point out that airplanes without power should glide, i.e. see gimli glider. I do wonder though if anyone has tried with recent Boeing models.
      - cmurf 2y ago
        They do glide, in fact airliners have a glide ratio rivaling gliders, and substantially exceeds general aviation airplanes.

dawnerd 2y ago

I thought ships were a little different since they can just follow the regulations of their flagged country and skirt a lot of rules.

hunter2_ 2y ago
With the amount of overlapping vocabulary, I would've thought airplanes are basically just ships in the sky. Ports, captains, boarding, etc. Or are these used metaphorically, like virtual computer stuff versus physical office stuff (desktop, folder, etc.) where there's enough similarity to avoid making new words but they're operated quite differently?
- philipwhiuk 2y ago
  The need to overfly a country, vs just sail round, means that airlines need country's permission to fly into/through a country. Overflight privileges cost money. In addition protectionism has meant that you generally have to land or take off at an airport run by the flag you carry. So unlike shipping, a Malaysian airline can't fly from the US to UK. This means that airlines need to be based at their 'real' base of operations, they can't just register in a tax-shelter.
  - rob74 2y ago
    Additionally, the fact that passenger airplanes carry, well, passengers, while cargo ships don't, means that airlines are automatically under more scrutiny. Further to what you wrote, some airlines have even been blacklisted by e.g. the EU because of safety reasons, like PIA (the flag carrier of Pakistan!) from 2020 to 2023.
    - hunter2_ 2y ago
      I guess cargo tends to go more by ship and passengers tend to go more by plane, but all 4 combinations certainly exist so no need to assume 2 variables are being compared simultaneously.
cookiengineer 2y ago
Which is the country their rules should follow? Their flag? Their company's residency? Their production location? Guess what, all are bought and sold off for cheap on the market. Oh and they pay less than 1.5% taxes, usually, if they even pay taxes.
- dawnerd 2y ago
  I agree it's a tricky problem to solve without agreements in place governing it. The airline industry seems to have settled on you follow the laws of the destination country. Ships in particular though do everything they can to abuse flagging their ships with the most lax working regulations.
- paulmd 2y ago
  The union of the ruleset of the flag country, the source country, and the destination country seems pretty reasonable - you should have to follow all three. Obviously not how it’s currently done, it’s an industry that has been doing it by flagging out of places like Liberia or Mauritania since time immemorial, but we can clearly do better. If this causes conflicts that make certain flags legally incompatible with certain combinations of sources and destinations - good. Those flags-of-convenience can harmonize their rules to the rest of the world. The environment and human rights will benefit.
noir_lord 2y ago
(tongue in cheek) isn't that what boeing did with the FAA?

jeromegv 2y ago

Ships and planes are so different in their regulations and safety measures, it's not even close or comparable.

_heimdall 2y ago

Losing power in a ship that spends almost its entire life in the open ocean is much less risky than losing power in an airplane though. Its reasonable that expectations, regulations, and maintenance schedules differ there. I have nothing good to say for oil spills though. I was interning st Exxon's upstream research department when the BP oil spill happened in the gulf. What I heard from many people that had been there for a a long time amounted to no one being too surprised given how the industry works and how much is outsourced. They also (rightfully) expected the main concern to be PR. Exxon researchers were the ones to give BP the chemicals to coagulate the oil into globs and sink it just below the surface. They were really proud of it at the time, though having family on the Gulf Coast I was less impressed with the solution or the tar balls that washed up on the beach for years.

spixy 2y ago
> is much less risky well Baltimore thinks otherwise
- _heimdall 2y ago
  My point stands in the context of the GP comment I replied to, they were pointing out how frequently container ships lose power. Baltimore was a terrible scenario with power failure at just the wrong time, but ships do regularly lose power or have mechanical issues and very rarely cause Amy damage. If a plane loses power it falls and hits whatever is below.
  - fcsp 2y ago
    I agree with you, but I would like to point out that airplanes without power should glide, i.e. see gimli glider. I do wonder though if anyone has tried with recent Boeing models.
    - cmurf 2y ago
      They do glide, in fact airliners have a glide ratio rivaling gliders, and substantially exceeds general aviation airplanes.