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Re:Alaska Airlines grounds Boeing 737 Max 9 planes after mid... by nerdponx on Saturday January 06, 2024 @09:27AM (#38891674)
> one of the safest modes of transportation

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.

Re:Alaska Airlines grounds Boeing 737 Max 9 planes after mid... by concordDance on Saturday January 06, 2024 @10:03AM (#38891965)
Hard to find up to date data, but looks like about two orders of magnitude, from ~5 deaths per billion miles to 0.05.
Re:Alaska Airlines grounds Boeing 737 Max 9 planes after mid... by cjbprime on Saturday January 06, 2024 @12:55PM (#38893508)
(Miles traveled is somewhat charitable to airlines and assumes trips are fungible between planes and cars.)
Re:Alaska Airlines grounds Boeing 737 Max 9 planes after mid... by oatmeal1 on Saturday January 06, 2024 @01:57PM (#38894152)
I'm not sure how you mean it's "charitable?" Could you explain?
Re:Alaska Airlines grounds Boeing 737 Max 9 planes after mid... by cjbprime on Saturday January 06, 2024 @02:01PM (#38894199)
Sure, sorry. Planes cover distance very quickly, and people use them for e.g. a six hour flight covering 4000 miles that they would not otherwise drive; this situation makes planes appear safer "per mile" than alternative valid metrics like "accidents per hour of travel" would.
Re:Alaska Airlines grounds Boeing 737 Max 9 planes after mid... by oatmeal1 on Saturday January 06, 2024 @02:02PM (#38894210)
What does the severity of the average incident have to do with whether I use a particular mode of transit?

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.