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A comment on Ask HN: Would you fly on a Boeing 737 MAX?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: Would you fly on a Boeing 737 MAX? by OhMeadhbh on Wednesday January 24, 2024 @01:05PM (#39120561)
The interesting thing about statistics is it implies future behaviour based on past behaviour. Up til now commercial aviation has been remarkably safe, per passenger mile traveled. But it appears that Boeing has been shaving off safety procedures to get 737's out of the factory faster. And their suppliers have been similarly pressured, by all accounts. And the carriers don't come to this issue with clean hands, either.

So yes, up til now, commercial aviation has some good numbers. But we're also seeing door plugs fly off, tail assembly bolts improperly fastened, wheels falling off planes as they taxi around the runway, single points of failure on flight control software that cause aircraft to nose into the ground. These are the type of failures you wouldn't see 20 years ago (except for the MD-80, which was designed and manufactured by the same guys who took over Boeing in the 2000s.)

I'm not sure I want to wait to be a statistic. I'm happy to take the train.

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Re:Ask HN: Would you fly on a Boeing 737 MAX? by jemmyw on Wednesday January 24, 2024 @02:49PM (#39121811)
> These are the type of failures you wouldn't see 20 years ago

I've been wondering about this. Is there an increase in failure rate or are we just reporting on issues that were not reported on before because this plane model is under extra scrutiny? When did Boeing have those battery issues? That was quite a few years ago and seemed to get forgotten about pretty quickly.

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Re:Ask HN: Would you fly on a Boeing 737 MAX? by brianshaler on Wednesday January 24, 2024 @04:51PM (#39123052)
Just make sure not to look up annual deaths per passenger mile traveled by rail.

You're right statistics don't predict the future. They can be informative when trying to understand the effect of a sudden increase in fatalities (referring to MAX8/MCAS here and not MAX9/bolts, of course) and how the result can still be a mode of transportation that is orders of magnitude safer than alternative.

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