https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines#Accidents_a...
Southwest has one of the best, if not the best, safety records of all major air carriers.
They are smaller than Southwest on most (not all) metrics, but in the same ballpark.
Their only accident is a bird strike causing 8 minor injuries.
True, but Southwest does not have a CEO that openly flaunts their being cheap either.
They've never had a major crash in almost 35 years.
I once won 15 hands of blackjack in a row, but then I lost a hand. Even the most expensive airlines eventually have fatal incidents, and it would be statistically improbable for Ryanair to not eventually have one as well. They may have an amazing safety record and stellar maintenance program, but the nature of flight is such that it is likely to eventually happen (perhaps through no fault of their own) if they are in business long enough. Whether “cheapness” will actually be a factor in that incident or not, people will take his prior statements and run with them.
All I was saying is that making such statements in a high-risk industry is not a fantastic idea, as those words may come back to bite him.
So your entire argument is people are dumb and they will make unwarranted associations. Brilliant
My argument is that it is idiotic for a CEO in such an industry to make comments about being cheap. It leaves the door open for people to place blame when an accident occurs. It’s like talking to the police if they want to interrogate you. It can’t help, but it can hurt. Why would you risk it?
The guy is doing a cheap airline, not an unsafe one. He’s not a madman. He’s a ruthless business guy, and he knows a crash due to poor maintenance would end his business.
Because they hurl large, heavy, metal objects with people on them into the sky at hundreds of miles per hour, thousands of times per day. Historically, that activity has resulted in some small percentage of those flights not coming down safely. The math says that it is quite likely to happen over the course of enough flights.
I have flown Ryanair a few times, I’d rather not go than take them today though.
Has Ryanair flown more flights than all the domestic and international commercial jet flights in Australian history? Because there has never been a crash of a commercial jet here despite several near misses.
Safety culture and training has more of a bearing than statistics.
That image will keep them going right up until they have a fatal crash, at which point the press, the government, and victims’ attorneys will use every word he has ever said about being cheap to crucify him and the company. Given their volume of flights, a fatal crash is statistically likely to happen at some point. I would be very careful ever making such statements if I were in such an industry.