> 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.
They are, almost by definition.
> 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.