It also should be considered that accidents depend on chance. It is completely fine to point out that aviation has gained an enormous standard of safety, which is the result of around of a hundred years of constant vigilance and self improvement of the industry.
Nevertheless a commercial airliner, recently produced, lost a door mid flight. Under less fortunate circumstances that could have been a major disaster and the statistic would look very different.
I think the worry people have is that safety standards are slipping, when it comes to building airplanes, specifically Boeing building airplanes. This is not something that would be noticeable in an accident statistic while it is actually happening, yet it is an extremely serious matter for the safety of aviation in the future.
This exactly. Looking at the safety record to make predictions about airline safety in the future is like making a bet in 2006 that subprime mortgages should be rated AAA because the price of real estate is always increasing. The real characteristics of what lies beneath the numbers matter.
I believe you just made the author's point. The door thing was an issue but in reality it was an incredibly minor issue considering the scale of the industry involved and the incredible reliability we now take for granted. Oh, and the fact that nobody died. Over and over again people are fixating on the door issue because there is basically nothing else to point at. As soon as anything even minor happens panic sets in and it is irrational given the safety record the industry has worked very hard to achieve. There 'could have been' a major disaster on any flight last year, but there wasn't. If we play the 'could have been' game we will always give in to fear and panic. The fact is there wasn't. And there hasn't been for a long time. The author is right to point out that, unfortunately, there will actually be a major event some time in the future but that is because nothing is perfect. In the grand scheme of things though, the airline industry safety record is about as perfect as something can be right now so please stop panicking.
That is a very condescending reponse. Auditing the procedures and documenting the problems is not panicking. Such methodical analysis is largely the opposite of panicking.
You are looking at a very superficial trailing indicator, the number of accidents.
While that's an important consideration, it is not very useful in terms of predicting future events.
Given that we now know that procedures are not being followed and records are not being kept, this tells us that the quality standards have slipped abysmally. That does not result in more accidents in the short term, but largely guarantees them in the longer term.
Boeing is equivalent to a software company with a great track record of not having security vulnerabilities who decides to get rid of the entire security team since nothing is happening and then patting themselves on the back quarter after quarter for all the money they save. Of course, we know the quality will be slipping and slipping and by the time the first vulnerability is exploited a few years later the codebase will be so riddled with holes that there might be no way to recover.
My argument, and I believe that of the article, is not about how the industry is handling this but instead how people and the press are handling this. Right now the industry, via regulations and internal pressures, is digging deep into Boeing and the entire culture that allowed this one thing to happen. I have not once argued this is a bad thing. I am continuing to argue that the level of reporting and public reactions deserve the title of 'panic' since they, to me, meet an irrational fear level given the safety track record of the industry as a whole. I encourage you to re-read my comment and tell me where I said the industry should ignore this. People and the press are panicking. The industry is reacting in a sane, well rehearsed and ultimately successful way.
> The door thing was an issue but in reality it was an incredibly minor issue considering the scale of the industry involved and the incredible reliability we now take for granted. Oh, and the fact that nobody died.
Rapid cabin depressurization is in fact a major issue for obvious reasons. The fact that no one died was a matter of luck (not at a super high altitude yet, no one sitting directly next to the door, seatbelt light still on, etc.)
The fact that airlines found many loose/missing bolts on doors in other 737s indicates that Boeing has a QC problem that could lead to future accidents. Systemic QC problems at a major plane manufacturer with aircraft components that are essential to maintaining pressurization is a major issue. The FAA is certainly treating it as such.
The 737 MAX has already been involved in multiple relatively recent fatal crashes. One went down killing everybody on board in 2018, and the same thing happened in 2019. And the scale is quite small. The total number of the entire 737 MAX series craft is less than 1500. [1] That's an extremely high ratio of these craft having errors, including catastrophic. Also, those planes were grounded for some time after the crashes, and air travel rates also plummeted during COVID. So we're only relatively recently getting back to normalcy on that front, and the craft are back to showing their worth.
After the Boeing whistleblower “killed himself”, I’ve just gotta assume anyone who has anything positive to say about Boeing either has a red dot on their forehead or a financial incentive (or both!).
Man, I really wish they were paying me but no, not a cent. I think it is just time that we stop allowing people to get away with panic as an unchecked response. The stats in the industry are incredibly clear. The article is about how clearly safe the industry is and how we are fixated on a statistically insignificant thing and I totally agree with it. If you deeply believe there is a massive issue with safety in the industry because a door came off then I highly urge you to look at other industries and apply the same level of scrutiny to them. We need the level of safety aviation has in cars, healthcare and industry. something like over 30k people died in cars in the US last year. Studies suggest hundreds of thousands of deaths a year due to medical malpractice and over a hundred thousand due to industrial air pollution alone. But I guess the 'severe' quality control issues at Boeing really do indicate that the aviation industry is in a safety crisis and the 0 deaths last year on major airlines completely back that up. Definitely no irrational panic involved when people go after a door issue for months in the aviation world but don't care about those 30+k road deaths or how massively terrible our healthcare stats are.
The investigation of criminal misconduct at Boeing is not a panic response. It is serious. The company is run by actual criminals who knowingly and wilfully defrauded US regulators and ignore safety/quality concerns raised by inspectors who work at the company.
Boeing's MCAS fraud caused two complete losses within a few months. The carnage only stopped when regulators forcibly grounded all 737 Max globally while Boeing continued to deny any issues with the airplane design and blamed the pilots.
If someone was sitting next to that window they would have been sucked out and killed.
The airplane safety record is relatively good DESPITE the criminals running the show at Boeing who are actively against safety.
You're not a Boeing shill but in one paragraph you use 1) ad hominems about people's panic and "rationality", 2) whataboutisms of the form "but flu killed more people than Covid", 3) straw argumentation about the specific reason for a massive issue with safety in Boeing (not "in the industry", etc).
So, effectively the same level of critical argumentation as a Boeing shill.
Actually, your ideological point is really that "Boeing does some things right, let's learn from them" which is fine but doesn't let Boeing off the hook.
I didn't defend Boeing, I defended the industry and its practices. Boeing needs to fix issues and the process I am defending is making them do that right now. I define panic as irrational fear. Irrational fear here is backed up by stats showing safety compared to industries with massively worse records than aviation that aren't experiencing nearly the reaction this one incident is having. Basically you have just thrown big words around and ignored the arguments presented. Present an argument and I will listen.
The clear salient point both I and, I believe, the article are making is that aviation is safe stop obsessing to the detriment of aviation over every inevitable issue that happens. Bad things will happen when hundreds of millions of people move billions of miles every year. It is unfortunate but the best safety conscious industry in the world is handling it. The fact that 0 died in the US on major airlines for the last ? how many years now? shows the incredible safety record of the industry. Obsessing over a door when you don't even care that several people in your city likely died in car accidents last year is the definition of panic.
> There 'could have been' a major disaster on any flight last year
One would think there is a slightly more risk of a major disaster for flights where the door plugs haven't been properly attached, compared to others. But I guess you've looked into the numbers in order to make the strong claims you make in your comment.
> can be right now so please stop panicking.
Just because people write about this whole thing doesn't mean people are panicking, so please stop trying to stop people from doing something they probably aren't even doing in the first place.
I think there are two different issues: the maintenance and piloting standards have dramatically increased over last decades.
Meanwhile, people are afraid that the manufacturer standards which have been very high since the 80s are starting to slip, with very new planes having problems.
And to fixating at door issue... isn't MCAS debacle still relatively new?
>The door thing was an issue but in reality it was an incredibly minor issue considering the scale of the industry involved and the incredible reliability we now take for granted.
No. This is a major issue, because it demonstrates that the safety protections which have been built into the industry can actually fail on such a basic level. There has been an enormous amount of work to try to make sure that Airplanes never miss critical components of their structure. Failing to install a bolt isn't one mistake it is dozens of mistakes which need to have happened and which show that the overall mistake rate has to be high.
If the door at failed at a different point, if the seating had been different, then there would have been deaths.
Actually, it wasn't. There is no perfect system. There is always some imperfect crack. To expect perfection and point and say the sky is falling when something minor happens is actually counterproductive. That attitude is likely to force the system to change and the current system's safety is a-m-a-z-i-n-g. Panic is likely to lead to forcing random change that actually could hurt the system's safety. I wish instead of constantly focusing on the rare safety issue the industry has we instead dug deep into what has enabled this industry to achieve this level of safety in the hopes we could apply it to the large number of vastly less successful industries out there. Cars, trains, industrial workplaces, etc etc. All of these could possibly benefit from the aviation industry if we could understand the factors that drove it to this level of safety.
Letting one of the most basic of errors slip through proves that the currently existing system has failed. There is no way around it. The current safety standards are the result of past behavior and will not continue with the current system.
Making sure bolts are installed is the most basic of basic things. If that can fail, many, many far more complex and involved problems are also failing. If you understand how safety in aviation works you would understand that this slipping through can only happen if many, many more things are also slipping through. Things which are far harder to inspect and to verify to assure flight safety.
The article is clear and I agree with it, and so do the stats. Airline safety is in the ridiculously safe category. The point of the article, and stats that are easily looked up, is that there have been 0 deaths this year on major airlines but despite that a door blew out and people are loosing their minds, for months. Put this energy into figuring out how this industry has been so incredibly successful at safety so that we can apply that to cars, medicine, industry or basically any other place because airlines are s-a-f-e and the fear and panic people are driving right now because of a door is actually likely to make things worse and not better. I love aviation. I spent a large chunk of my life dedicated to it but we can't innovate even one little bit because a door broke off meanwhile we drive by fatal accidents on the road all the time. Most people know people that have died in a car accident and many have even been in near fatal accidents but there is no panic, fear or months long panic in national media over the 30k+ deaths on the road every year. I'm not blithe. I am actually mad. I -love- flying but we are devastating the industry with panic to the great loss of everyone. Go ahead, keep hyping the fear and drive people from the skies and onto the roads so that they can actually be in danger.
The discussion above was about what makes you blithe and fact-free, which I implicitly agreed with the other commenter was the case, and so, yes, the age of your account is one way how people sanity-check for trolls and shills, which is relevant to having a "discussion" at all.
Yes. Boeing is great. Boeing is a-m-a-z-i-n-g. They prioritize quality and safety above profit. No issues at Boeing management, whatsoever. Ignore the whistleblowers. Bunch of liars.
> I think the worry people have is that safety standards are slipping, when it comes to building airplanes, specifically Boeing building airplanes. This is not something that would be noticeable in an accident statistic while it is actually happening, yet it is an extremely serious matter for the safety of aviation in the future.
yeah airline safety in a year can be a lagging indicator. and the airlines are safe due to the safety regulations being respected and issues being broadcasted rather than in spite of it
> To wit, according to the annual report just released by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) 2023 goes down as one of the safest years in commercial aviation history. Not a single fatal accident was recorded involving a commercial jet. Not one.
> Combining jet and turboprop operations, IATA says there were 37 million commercial flights last year. Among those, the only deadly crash was that of an ATR turboprop in Nepal last January.
I’m not sure that’s correct, at least if you mean the determination that the official accident investigation reached [0]. Pilot error and insufficient training on the new approach (being flown for the first time into the new airport), but I don’t see anything in the report that suggested they maliciously wanted to die and kill their passengers. That seems like a pretty big accusation to bring to bear.
Although if I remember correctly, didn’t the pilot become a pilot herself after she lost her husband, a pilot, in a crash 10 years prior?
(Edit: it was 16 years rather than 10 [1]. I’d forgotten how tragic the whole situation was, and how sympathetic everybody involved.)
Ah, I missed that the line that mentions the report wasn't talking about the report as a whole. Sounded like the second line was getting its information from somewhere other than that report.
Given the level of sophistication and automation in commercial planes, the technological advances makes it the default state to be safer and safer every year. It is like Newton's apple falling and reporting "the apple altitude decreased again" - it is obvious it should.
At the same time, the incidents last year are not excusable. This is all the noise about, the quality control problems are inexcusable and having a safe year does not do anything to save face.
> the technological advances makes it the default state to be safer and safer every year.
Technological advances also increase complexity which can increase risk in unforeseen ways. Here is a perfect example where a single action within a 180 millisecond window was almost enough to crash a plane [0].
I think you have misinterpreted the video. It was a pilot error to initiate go-around after the thrust reversers have been deployed. And software preventing engine to increase (reverse) thrust when it sensed that aircraft is no longer on the ground is what probably saved the day compared to a similar previous incident that resulted in a crash.
Could software be made to handle it even better? Absolutely. But it's not a software error per se that caused this.
You're missing the fact the engines were left in different configurations because of a subtle timing difference between the ECUs. That left the plane in an unstable state. The pilots actions were not an error per se - the video even emphasises that it is not banned in Europe and pilots on that one model alone do it once a month.
It's not a timing difference, one ECU controls the left engine and takes input from left weight-on-wheels sensor, the other controls the right engine and takes input from the right sensor. This is by design, it ensures redundant operation. It was just unfortunate timing that wheels on one side were up in the air while others were on the ground when go around was issued.
> the video even emphasises that it is not banned in Europe
No, what's strictly not demanded by EASA is that the manufacturers enable safe application of go-around thrust even if reversers have been deployed. Airbus implemented this nevertheless, but that was only tested with both wheels on the ground.
I think a reasonable fear is that long stretches of exceptional safety could breed complacency and cause aviation companies to feel like they can slack a bit on it.
The same thing happened with vaccines to a large degree, right? A generation grows up without measles, and then they think maybe vaccinating against measles isn't really that important. After all, they never knew anybody who got it, how bad could it be?
That fear needs to exist all the time about everything. Aviation safety is one of many, food safety, health care, government in general, etc. Becoming complacent will start kill people again at some point. It is called entropy.
Successful public health and aviation both require both deep engineering & science, strong top-down policies and enforcement, and robust & knowledgeable on-the-ground personnel.
And of course a public bought-into all of this.
The closest I can think of-prior and surely because I’m a poor student of history—goes back to Roman aqueducts and roads, where so many things had to go right and maintained.
The incredible effectiveness of airline regulation shouldn't be understated.
Despite being a criminally negligent organization, Boeing still failed to kill anyone because of the FAA (their direct action and also airlines' fear of consequences).
Isn't it the case that Boeing inspectors used to report to the FAA, and now they report to Boeing managers, so Boeing can have them fired if they raise too many red flags? This was due to legislation passed in 2004 IIRC, here's an overview:
And you're actually raising a good point here: Only US citizens get to vote on the US federal government, which controls FAA, yet many countries indirectly rely on the FAA as the primary regulator for Boeing, as far as I understand.
Maybe the regulators of a few large industrial nations or the EU have the size/staffing/funding and leverage necessary to make a difference (and that's still a few steps removed from the FAA!). Others (Ethiopa and Indonesia come to mind) are effectively at the mercy of the FAA.
when talking about the scale of the US federal government, I don't think average (non-wealthy, non-politically connected) US citizens have any more say than anybody else in the world. I would bet wealthy citizens of other countries have a lot more ability to affect the US federal government than average citizens. A tiny, statistically non-existent vote is entirely meaningless. Basically just symbolic of democratic ideals.
> And you're actually raising a good point here: Only US citizens get to vote on the US federal government, which controls FAA, yet many countries indirectly rely on the FAA as the primary regulator for Boeing
Except for when Boeing is allowed to regulate itself
Boeing is about half the signal, so no, absolutely because of Boeing. That the 737 MAX is extremely dangerous for a modern jetliner doesn't refute the clear truth that the 737 MAX is very safe in a historical context. It's a huge outlier precisely because the industry has done so well at this.
Quick edit: But also the article is talking specifically about deaths, and as far as I recall no one died with the Boeing incidents. Granted the door plug one was probably pure luck (no one was sitting next to it).
2023 wasn't completely uneventful for Boeing and the max (from wikipedia):
- January 13, China Southern Airlines returned the MAX to service (i.e. still grounded for a small part of 2023)
- In April of 2023, it was revealed that US engineers had recommended grounding 737 Max immediately following the Ethiopian Airlines accident.
- December 28, the FAA revealed that Boeing had asked airlines to check newer 737 MAX aircraft for a possible loose screw in the rudder control system. The FAA wants to "closely monitor" the targeted inspections and consider additional measures if further loose or missing components are discovered.
Seems like that's more of a function of the whims of the media than anything. Passenger boardings were back up past 2017 numbers [0], though, so maybe only slightly down.
Not really. Planes can't fly without pilots. Even flying a large jet with a single pilot instead of two would be very hard. It can be landed in an emergency (e.g. one pilot incapacitated), but it is hard work for the remaining pilot and requires some cooperation from ATC. Can't really do that with multiple aircraft at the same time.
Even more so in case of adverse weather or any systems failures. It quickly becomes too much for one pilot, that's why only small jets are certified for single pilot operations.
I didn't expect this ignorance on HN given the industry most of us work in.
Safety and quality are a product of systems, processes, and policies and not individual skills. Mistakes will always be made even by including cishet natively english speaking upper-middle class white men. No good manager should expect individuals to be able to account for issues all on their own.
In Boeing's case, the problems are very obviously management compromising quality by encouraging corner-cutting for reducing costs to increase profits. It worked for a while because Boeing had the redundancies in processes to catch errors before they had an impact, but eventually they compromises were too much. Tell me, what does this has to do with race and gender?
Sorry I'm unaware of what you're saying? Are you saying that pilots are being selected without meeting training requirements and licensing? That doesn't sound right and I must be missing your point.
I think, reading between the lines, you are replying to a "blame wokeness for everything bad that happens" post. Being generous, it's about one order of magnitude more rational than blaming gays for earthquakes. But it's the same basic idea.
I don't like John Oliver. Anyway, I would like to know how many near misses there have been over time. Not just deadly crashes. We could have seen a decline in already-rare fatal crashes as all other types of crashes increase, and planes literally keep falling apart. I think this blogger is trolling with a hot take and/or pushing propaganda.
It’s very easy to objectively see the improvement over time. Just google around and look at some charts from the 60s to today, preferably that relate accidents and fatalities per million flights so it’s properly scaled. Every chart you look at has improved remarkably. Doesn’t matter how many recent Boeing anecdotes you pull out, planes and regulations have improved and the result is in these numbers.
It's not just anecdotes. Many planes were parked for 2 years and suffered unexpected issues as they were rushed back into service with minimal oversight, after many experienced personnel retired. This isn't even addressing the Boeing whistleblower who mysteriously "committed suicide" after telling his family that he wouldn't, or the spectacular accidents lately with wheels and doors literally falling off of aircraft.
You can google all the stats you want but in the current environment I don't trust any recent stats. They are at best cherry-picked, like making dubious claims about "deaths in 2023" vs. serious accidents which indicate systemic problems.
> Many planes were parked for 2 years and suffered unexpected issues as they were rushed back into service with minimal oversight, after many experienced personnel retired.
I haven't heard of any, care to give examples? I did hear of a few runway incursion incidents due to ATC staff shortage and overwork, but these seem to have subsided (though there was a really bad one in Japan just a couple of days into 2024 that killed some people).
> or the spectacular accidents lately with wheels and doors literally falling off of aircraft.
Incidents, not accidents. There is a difference.
> You can google all the stats you want but in the current environment I don't trust any recent stats. They are at best cherry-picked, like making dubious claims about "deaths in 2023" vs. serious accidents which indicate systemic problems.
How can you not trust a simple stat like number of deaths / number of miles flown? Do you think there were accidents with deaths that were hidden?
Not to say that there aren't reasons to worry about the slippages at Boeing, though. They betray a negligent eating into the safety margins the industry has built into design and operation of aircraft. The point is that last year, these margins held.
They're not my anecdotes. They are things that made international news due to being so scandalous. One blogger pulls uncited stats out his ass and now I have to fight in the comment section to get people to admit the obvious.
So you see, there is a clear pattern here. If you're waiting for these people to incriminate themselves, you're going to be waiting a long time. But they can't hide accidents for long because everyone cares about having safe planes, and every single one of these incidents has hundreds of witnesses.
>How can you not trust a simple stat like number of deaths / number of miles flown? Do you think there were accidents with deaths that were hidden?
I think I already explained it. Airplane crashes are very rare, so I believe the numbers can vary dramatically year by year. Planes are very variable in capacity, so the number of flights and deaths is also highly variable. I can't say for sure whether the number is reliable, but even if it is I think being fixated on that number is a bad idea. All the negligence and personnel issues are putting people in grave danger.
>Incidents, not accidents. There is a difference.
Yes this is true. Accident implies nobody is at fault, or this stuff is excusable. It really isn't, because it's negligence at multiple levels. On the bright side, that is easier to fix than defective plane designs.
I find the presence of this article to be inorganic. Why is this dude trying to convince us that air travel is safer, when everyone can see that it isn't because of the sheer number of ridiculous failures? That's the hilarious nature of the world we live in. People committed to lying for a living put themselves in the position of having to say amusingly wrong shit all the time. I expect to eventually see a reporter telling us that planes are safe as a plane crashes in the background behind him. It would fit the 2020s perfectly.
> Yes this is true. Accident implies nobody is at fault, or this stuff is excusable. It really isn't, because it's negligence at multiple levels. On the bright side, that is easier to fix than defective plane designs.
"Incident" vs "Accident" in Aviation have very specific meaning (see https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/830.2 for example). Simply put, an accident is an event where there is any of: death, serious injury, or substantial damage to the aircraft, and an incident is an event relating to the safety of operations regardless of whether or not death, injury, or substantial damage to the aircraft occurred. Neither have anything to do with whether there is fault or whether they are excusable.
Regardless of the recent incidents, air travel remains exceedingly safe when compared with other modes of transport, and comments such as these make me wonder what I'm missing.
Again, I'm not excusing these Boeing issues -- they are very serious. However calling a simple (number of deaths/total flight hours) calculations that are trivially verified as "uncited stats" is extremely hysterical to the point where you cannot be taken seriously at all.
I don't care anymore if you take me seriously. The fact you are so in denial about the extent of what is happening makes me think you're not arguing in good faith. Maybe you wrote the blog post?
In your defense, I'm sure the general trend over like 30 years is that air travel has gotten safer, probably because of increased use of autopilot and other software, and general equipment advances. However, that does not disprove the fact that there is a recent spate of ridiculous failures that probably haven't even made it to statistics yet. Shall we overlook a dramatic increase in embarrassing incidents because the larger trend is downward? I don't think so.
I do appreciate the clarification about an industry definition of incident vs. accident. By your own definition, incidents and accidents appear to be on the rise. If you believe every stat that the government comes up with, I have a bridge to sell you. When they don't like a number, they redefine it and keep calling it by the same name. Just like CPI, unemployment, GDP, etc. Or average temperatures. We do need stats but you have to think critically about where they come from and who would be blamed if they were bad.
I think the worry people have is that safety standards are slipping, when it comes to building airplanes, specifically Boeing building airplanes. This is not something that would be noticeable in an accident statistic while it is actually happening, yet it is an extremely serious matter for the safety of aviation in the future.