That said, I don't really want to live with the nature of all these flaws. This is not their rocket science that is failing, but it rather reeks of complacency.
I still remember the wrenches found in early Dreamliners. Noone died, but I mean, come on.
Bonus multiplier if someone was then reading articles about pilots and ATC not getting any sleep.
Planes are more comparable to buses than to cars (unless it's a small general aviation plane). So a better comparison would be between the risks of flying and the risks of taking a long-distance bus.
I'm not sure why you think busses are more equivalent to planes other than holding more passengers.
The more I think about it, the more similarities I find. For instance, both long-distance buses and large airplanes are usually boarded only at dedicated places (bus terminals and airports); both have a separate baggage compartment below the passenger floor; both have built-in bathrooms; both are driven by trained drivers/pilots; both have a set schedule for departure; and so on.
I've taken plenty of long distance bus trips (12 hours or more in each direction), and I've also taken many airplane trips (usually on the 737 family), and I'd say the experience on both is very similar: taking a taxi to the bus terminal or the airport, looking for the correct spot or gate for boarding, putting most of the luggage in the lower compartment of the bus or airplane, waiting until the scheduled departure time, sitting still on your designated seat for most of the trip, arriving at the other terminal or airport, retrieving the luggage, taking a taxi to the actual destination. There are some differences, for instance on a bus there's a rest stop for food after several hours, while on an airplane they serve some food in the vehicle itself, but these differences are minor compared to the differences between an airplane trip and a car trip.
I often fly 300-400 miles (I’m in the US where trains are a joke). If airplanes became seriously unsafe, I would drive. There is no world where I would take a bus instead.
No, I'm going by my own experience. I've taken plenty of long-distance bus trips (I've just checked on a map site, one long-distance bus trip I've made many times is around 800 km). Several of them were to cities I could have taken an airplane to (and I did take an airplane to them in other circumstances), and the only difference is that the bus trip usually took longer (and was less expensive).
> If airplanes became seriously unsafe, I would drive. There is no world where I would take a bus instead.
If airplanes became seriously unsafe, I would take a long-distance bus. I can't say there's no world where I would buy a car and learn how to drive just to avoid taking a long-distance bus, but I can't see any advantage other than avoiding the short taxi steps to and from the bus terminal at either end of the trip.
You choose what car to buy, but the bus company chooses what us to buy. You maintain your own car but the bus company maintains the bus. You drive your own car, but a professional hired and vetted by the bus company drives the bus. You drive your car from a to b when you want, but the bus travels along predefined routes at specific times.
I'm not sure why you think cars are more equivalent to planes, especially when they hold fewer passengers.
The equivalent would be car crashes caused by mechanical failure where even an expert driver couldn’t have avoided catastrophe.
Though, maybe that’s balanced out by some large percentage of car crash deaths being the driver and/or passengers in the “other” car who were struck unexpectedly by a driver who was reckless, distracted or impaired.
Either way, I agree, it seems like a stretch to call plane and car crashes equivalent.
"...Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems said they discovered improperly drilled fastener holes in the aft pressure bulkhead — which maintains pressure when planes are at cruising altitude – on the fuselages of some models of the 737 Max. Wichita, Kansas-based Spirit said late Wednesday because it uses multiple suppliers, only some units are impacted and it will continue to deliver fuselages to Boeing.
Boeing said the issue does not affect safety of flight, and 737 Max planes already in service can keep flying..."
> Boeing Repeatedly Burned By Outsourcing
> Boeing's outsourcing strategy might be producing more problems than solutions.
No, no, no. Let me re-write them for you Chris Loh[1][2], since you've failed as a journalist.
Boeing's Decision To Outsource Repeatedly Harms Fliers.
Boeing's Decision To Outsource Causes More Problems Than Solutions.
Have some balls, man.
aircraft -> company
How far do standards have to fall before that's no longer true?
Recall also that aviation is the safest in aggregate, but the severity of each individual incident tends to be much worse than others.
We could add lots of fender-benders between taxiing planes to push down the average severity of each plane "crash." Then they would still be less deadly per mile travelled, but also less severe per incident on average than other modes of transit.
According to [1], commercial planes are about 3 times safer than buses per passenger mile (edit: passenger hours, sorry). That doesn't sound like a large enough margin to prevent certain more accident-prone models from earning the "deadlier than a bus" badge of shame, especially since the average is skewed by extremely reliable widebody models like the 777, A340 and A380. Meanwhile, commuter planes already suffer from a higher fatality rate than pickup trucks, while private planes are second only to motorcycles.
[1] https://turbli.com/blog/the-safest-transport-modes-ranked-by...
Uh... the "Fatalities by passenger miles" chart in that article says that fatalities per billion passenger miles are 70 times lower for commercial planes vs. buses.
And in fact if you normalize to actually comparable transportation modes, my guess is it's even worse. The overwhelming majority of bus miles are driven on urban transit routes at low speed. You'd want to split out long haul (Greyhound et. al.) buses to compare to aviation, and highway travel is always going to involve more fatalities.
Basically, even knowing that it's probably the most dangerous jetliner in decades, I'd still view a 737 MAX as an extremely safe travel option.
When a regular person asks "is this safe?" they mean "is it safe for me?", not whether someone else on the vehicle might get injured.
Boeing needs to be held responsible. Absolutely no way should the FAA grant Boeing an exemption for these planes under ANY circumstances. The planes have proven themselves to be dangerous and Boeing is doing nothing to fix them because it would hurt their bottom line.
This company needs to be investigated to the fullest extent by the FAA. The fact that this newest plane was only just rolled off the factory assembly line 2 months ago… a plane doesn’t just rip itself apart in less than two months. Something is seriously wrong at Boeing.
"Bean counter" logic implies putting cost savings above all else, like maybe Walmart or Amazon would do.
I hope airplane customers (the airlines) care as much about safety as they do cost savings, since their customers certainly do.
My friend and I were joking "well I'm sure they know what they are doing / hey if its not safe people won't fly it / they can just rename it again if it does crash / its all just big gubmint red tape / hey if it has X% risk of crash and Y already crashed then the next Z flight should be OK right?"
Within 24 hours they blow out a door on a new jet. Amazing levels of incompetence mixed with hubris.
There were maybe around 10-15 passengers, the crew asked us to not all sit at the front for balance. The plane had been sat on the ground powered down for hours, even though it was already late afternoon. I was first on the plane and it was very hot and stuffy but a flight attendant assured me the a/c would take care of that soon and indeed it got comfortable before we even pushed back.
Burbank has a very short runway so planes have to get to takeoff speed quick and then climb steep. This is quite an experience in a plane with huge powerful engines like the MAX with fuel for only a one hour flight and essentially no passengers or their luggage.
Later, the wifi didn't work.
This was shortly after they had been allowed back into the air and at no point did I relax into my seat. White knuckles the whole way.
The first couple crashes were sobering, but I thought Boeing would recover and a single issue like that would get corrected and not happen again. The fact they are still trying to "blame" pilots for aircraft design flaws though is beyond the pale and shows they learned absolutely nothing.
I was trying to put my finger on it last night. I got on a MAX a few weeks ago and I absolutely noticed and felt mildly uncomfortable for a minute. I was chiding myself for feeling irrational fear.
The reason was in front of me the whole time. It's actually rational after all:
I simply do not trust the people who designed this aircraft.