I don’t think it makes sense for passengers to worry about the plane model. I haven’t done the math but conceptually it’s like being paranoid about taking plane A that has a 99.99998 safety vs plane B that has a 99.99999 safety.
For the crew, things are a little different given that they are all day long, all year long in the same plane model, so those minuscule risks compound.
People are bad at conceptualising low probabilities. That’s why they play lottery!
I love the idea, but as far as I know, there's nothing stopping an airline from changing the plane "last minute" right before the flight. Then you have to make a decision at the gate whether you want to turn around a go back home (or hotel) after spending hours getting to the airport, going through security, and waiting at the gate.
Let me try a sanity check. I fly a lot for work, have eleven tickets booked now. There's nothing stopping the airline in one of those eleven cases.
For five flights, the airline would have a problem swapping out the planes because there's likely only one plane on hand at that airport at that time. For three, I think the population of the country would be quick to disapprove if the airline did it with any frequency. For two, the airline can't very well swap because it's that airline's biggest aircraft and the route is usually nearly full.
I used to fly a lot for work. I think I encountered "equipment change"[0] maybe once a month. The idea that an airline would do it as some sort of ploy to attract passengers afraid of a particular airframe seems...unlikely.
0 - the airline term of art for this.
I think the idea that passengers would be afraid of a particular airframe is a relatively new one, so I'm not sure how useful past data is here.
Look up the history of the DC-10. People have been afraid of specific airframes for many decades.
I'm old enough to remember this, can confirm that the general public was afraid of the DC 10- the entire model was banned for a time when the FAA pulled its certificate. We're one deadly US crash from the end of the MAX and from a Boeing bankruptcy.
https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/2022-11/AvWeek%20-%2...
Hard disagree.
First, when I was flying regularly, it was during the height of the original 737 Max scare, which also occurred within a few years of the CFM56 fan blade problems and the 737NG pickle fork fatigue cracking problem. It was a rough couple of years for the 737 family, yet I didn’t notice any serious uptick in equipment changes, and I was flying on airlines with a bunch of 737s in their fleets.
Second, the idea of some conspiracy involving falsely advertising which airframe an airline intends to use for a flight, which would involve submitting false flight plans and publishing false flight data, is patently absurd to anyone who has been exposed even as an end-user to the tech stack of the airlines, such as it is.
Between getting licensed employees to lie to the government and the airlines antiquated software, I don’t believe they could do what is being suggested, even if they wanted to.
It happened to the 1970 MAX 8, which was grounded permanently before Kayak could filter it, but "sales never fully recovered" as Wikipedia says. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Comet
My wife once got bumped off the last flight out of DC one night because the airline decided to switch to a smaller plane. There was no mechanical or logistical reason given.
Hopefully its rare but it can and does happen.
Obviously there were aforementioned reasons.
For technical reasons.
I'm not sure what you're saying, as you using "aforementioned" to mean "not mentioned" rather than "previously mentioned"?
I'm sure the airline had a reason, though at a minimum it wasn't shared with the passengers. In all likelihood that means it wasn't a mechanical issue as those are always shared in my experience.
My best guess was that, given it was the last flight of the day, the airline decided they needed to move planes around differently for the next morning.
"the population of the country would be quick to disapprove" - now you've got me curious. Who would be disapproving? I doubt US population would care much for a Boeing Swapout, or Europe for an Airbus one. Embraer is from Brazil, but I don't think LATAM even has any. Does the Eastern world care more?
Or is it a model thing? Noise/pollution thing? Are you flying to some small island nation with special planes?
Or is it a model thing?
Yes, this is very likely about avoiding the max 8.
737 Max in general [1], but especially recently the Max 9 [2].
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX_groundings
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX#Alaska_Airlines...
Germans would.
It's difficult to explain, you have to live here a while and experience it. Some things are tolerated, some things NOT. Occasionally flying other aircraft than planned? OK. Skewing the occasional swaps, deceptively using an aircraft type that the general public distrusts? NOT OK. That would turn niché distrust of an aircraft type into wide distrust of the airline.
For five flights, the airline would have a problem swapping out the planes because there's likely only one plane on hand at that airport at that time.
This is disingenuous at best.
Assuming you're talking about flights where an aircraft operates an outbound flight from its base to airport XXX and then an inbound flight back "home" again.
If the airline decides to swap on outbound (base-XXX) flight, you'll get exactly that aircraft on the inbound (XXX-base) flight. It won't be completely last minute, because as soon as the outbound flight is swapped you know you'll be flying that aircraft on the inbound leg, but still, unless you change your flight to another, you'll be flying the swapped aircraft nevertheless. You just get a few more hours' notice.
FWIW, exactly this happened to my wife on Friday (Lufthansa transatlantic flight scheduled as A350, operated by an A340 due to disruption in Germany earlier last week due to freezing rain). For her that was the second late aircraft swap of 4 flights in the last 14 days.
True. Sorry. GP wrote "last minute", I suppose I was a little too narrowminded. I should have considered a swap at the last hub as well.
I used to fly a lot and it's not common in my experience though it does happen. Far more common is a flight is canceled or delayed and you have to take a different flight, possibly even on a different airline.
If someone's objective is to reduce their likelihood of flying a particular airframe, these tools can probably help albeit at the possible cost of higher prices or less convenient schedules.
But there are no ironclad guarantees if someone feels that strongly.
Off topic but because you seem to be a frequent flyer: Have you come across a program that sustainably offsets emissions caused by one's air travel? I did the calculation the other day and a single flight to Hawaii caused as much CO2e as my entire household for a year (electricity, LNG, gas). I'm reducing flying to a minimum but I wonder if there's an actual measurable thing I could do to reduce the damage.
Everyone responding saying it doesn’t happen is wrong. It may not happen often to them. I have flown 500,000 miles.
I have family and friends in the industry who pilot, work ground ops, maintenance, and are flight attendants. At an airline with over 300 departures per day things go wrong, crews time out, aircraft have issues on landing that somehow get ignored until morning, and many more examples then planes get swapped.
They generally have very few planes on standby because it’s like flying them empty, it’s an inefficient use of money. It turns into wack a mole quickly and one flight steals a plane, gate, or crew from another until none are left.
Aviation authorities would get upset if some airline has a routine of doing this. This is absolutely something they keep a track of.
But yes, there's nothing stopping them from doing it for you flight. Or even from "permanently" doing it and undoing a day later.
Why would authorities get upset?
TBH, because they track it.
They would have some good reasoning, because they don't make a fuss about exchanging equivalent planes, but if it's happening all the time, the planes must not be equivalent. But the actual reason is that somebody is always looking, and that somebody would get wary.
Playing it safe by delaying a flight to swap out planes looks good to aviation authorities.
It absolutely happens, I had a WN flight on a MAX 8 last week that was changed to a 737-800 the day before.
I've personally been on a flight that was delayed because of an issue with a plane where the airline was waiting for a different plane to arrive. I don't know if it was a different model or not, but it was definitely a different plane.
As hearsay, I've had a friend on a flight where they made everyone deboard the plane because of an issue so they could get on a different plane. After waiting for that plane to arrive and boarding it, they decide there's an issue with that plane too. Then, after all of that hassle and a long delay, they claim the original plane has been fixed and re-boarded that plane.
Lots of things can happen
Especially in Europe, where any delay over 3 hours results in a right to compensation [0]. It's quite usual to swap a technical fault out so then have time to fix it.
Last few flights the poor staff have come from one airport and returned to another country..
0: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-right...
Yeah, I mean, sometimes they find stuff wrong with the plane they can't fix.
I've definitely swapped planes a few times after sitting in the plane for a while.
This happens very rarely, and is usually of the same family. You replace an Airbus 320 with another airbus, not a boeing. Simply because those airlines don't have both on them in their portfolio.
Now if its specifically to avoid a certain type of Boeing 737 max when the airline already flies boeing, yeah thay might happen indeed.
The only cases of switching families is long haul, like Emirates replaced an Airbus a380 with a 777 once on a trip I took. Still caused massive issues because the boeing is smaller, so they don't like doing this.
Plenty of airlines have both A320 and B737 and/or a mix of NG/MAX. Replacing one with another will almost always have a different seat arrangement, necessitating mucking around with pre-allocated seats, and is avoided whenever practical.
How often the pilots have certification (or whatever it is called) to fly the swapped in aircraft? Maybe the usually do, or perhaps it is typical to swap the crew as well?
certification
well the whole point of MCAS was to allow pilots to fly the 737MAX without needing another type rating
You’d generally be swapping the crew as well which is another reason this doesn’t happen a lot.
True - at least most "737-only" low-cost airlines (Southwest, Ryanair, ...) use the older 737 models and the MAX (which Ryanair has rechristened to "737-8200" because of... reasons) interchangeably AFAIK.
The 8200 is a higher density version of the 8 and it comes with an extra pair of exits because of this.
Yes, but according to Wikipedia, Boeing refers (or referred) to it as "737 MAX 200", so the suspicion that Ryanair insisted on renaming it to get rid of the tainted MAX moniker is warranted...
According to https://www.easa.europa.eu/en/downloads/7297/en the type is called 737-8200 and belongs to the Max group.
According to https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/FSBR_B737_Rev_19_Dra...
In January 2021, the FSB conducted an analysis of the changes introduced for the 737-8200. The analysis identified that the 737-8200 is functionally equivalent to the 737-8. The 737-8200 is incorporated into the MAX series aircraft group in paragraph 8.1 and in Appendix 2, Master Differences Requirements (MDR) Table.
Both the EASA and the FAA calls it 737-8200. Neither did it to remove the MAX moniker from it.
Southwest has dozens of Max 8s, for what it’s worth: https://www.planespotters.net/airline/Southwest-Airlines
I booked a flight with them last night, and it’s scheduled to fly on one.
Solution: Fly an airline that doesn't use Boeing at all. Like JetBlue.
I would say there is basically zero chance that you would be switched to a Boeing last minute with JetBlue.
Until there’s a mechanical issue last minute and they put you on another airline to get you a seat home.
It can happen but is it a real problem or just a hypothetical one?
It does happen and there are a variety of other reasons why you can end up on a different plane than you intended. You can improve your odds of avoiding specific airframe(s) by not booking them but you mostly can't guarantee it.
(Sort of. If you want to be sure to avoid regional jets on trans-oceanic flights you're pretty safe.)
Also if enough people start doing this wouldn't the airlines just stop reporting what the plane is.
Congratulations, you've found a new insurance niche.
Many airlines, in practice, only fly a particular type or type of planes on a particular route.
True for individual flights but not on the mass scale. For the masses this will still be useful. And a hit to MAX 8 and other Boeing 737 models in the short and medium run. The aversion will die out eventually for those who can weather the storm (and make some more money by those having other type of planes).
It's not that there's 'nothing stopping' the airline, it's that under the normal operation of an airline, planes are moved around and rescheduled all the time, up just hours (or sooner!) before the flight.
I would guess something like 0% of assigned tail numbers (not plane model) remain the same a week before booking. Airlines that fly multiple models on the same route would be harder to reassign, but days before the flight if it hasn't sold out, it's still very possible they'll get moved around.
The safest way to not fly a particular model of plane is to not fly with airlines that open them.
Or even earlier than at the gate. If you book a flight for 6 months time, there's nothing stoping them changing the allocated aircraft in 3 months.
From own experience, the latest (in the day) a flight is (especially the short 2-3h flights within EU) the more chances is you will be delayed (if every fight is delayed by 30mins, by the end of the day multiple those 30mins x 4 or 5 or 6).
When a company may see that "oops we are gonna be paying $$$$ for the delays" they will have no fear to bring in another plane (not the one you booked).
The same applies of course for any planes that are damaged, etc.
I tried asking ChatGPT but couldn't give me an answer of the frequency "how often to air companies swap the planes" (I tried with various choices of words) and it couldn't give me a percentage or any other metric.
Even if this is not a foolproof way to avoid flying on a 737 max, using it will provide a very _visible_ signal to the airlines. If they're losing ticket sales because people don't want to fly on a 737, the airlines will find a way to adapt. Even a marginal change of a few percentage points can shift a route from profitable to unprofitable.
Airbus is already outselling Boeing 2-1. If you're looking at a 5-10 year lead time anyways, they can expand production to eat further into Boeing's share if that's what the airlines demand.
I’m starting to treat general aviation as though it was 50 years ago: Very unsafe and expensive
My expectation is that its going to take a serious accident to get anything to change.
I’m unaware of a highly utilized yet significantly broken system (Tacoma Narrows anyone?) that was able to improve iteratively without catastrophic failure driving improvement (Space Shuttle)
Most human systems don’t seem to have the ability to build fourth order forecasting into system design across all individual and integrated components
The idea of a “factor of safety” seems to be just completely missing in most engineering systems because tolerances mean waste and shareholders won’t allow waste that doesn’t go into their pockets
Very unsafe? In the past 14 years there have been 72 fatalities involving US Air Carriers, out of around 250 million flight hours flown[1]. That’s fewer fatalities in 14 years than there are US motor vehicle fatalities in a single day (on average).
[1]: https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/StatisticalReviews/Pages/CivilAv...
Humans are bad at statistics. For example the incident at three mile island in 1979 didn't kill anyone, but the accident crystallized anti-nuclear safety concerns among activists and the general public, and accelerated the decline of efforts to build new reactors.
Don’t underestimate the direct effects.
Three mile island directly cost well over 1 billion in 1979 dollars (2+B today) just in terms of destroyed assets and initial cleanup costs. The wider impact was even more expensive.
Such a visible failure changed the risk/reward calculations which then hurt the nuclear industry quite a bit. We did keep building US nuclear reactors afterwards, but they were never that profitable in the first place making the industry very sensitive to disruption.
Timeline of US reactor construction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident#/me...
You have it backwards. Industries that are profitable are subject to disruption.
Looks like Chernobyl really killed nuclear.
requiring events to kill anyone as evidence of danger of death is a foolish standard, obviously.
People are "bad at statistics" in the sense that the very real evidence coming from, e.g. 3 mile, is hard to bring into statistical models appropriately, not in the sense that there was no evidence there.
So what are you basing it on if not deaths/flight hours
This question sort of answers itself, but why skirt the real concern, just add a "Chance of crashing" filter to the flight search? Bonus jobs for data scientists and takes the consumer out of the odds calculation.
Please qualify 'serious accident' in the wake of 2 crashes and a decompression event forcing landing.
My definition:
Everyone on the plane has to die in a way that the plurality of citizens are horrified enough that they can put public pressure on a public figure powerful enough to force structural change
This is the same idea as the cynical idea of “taking advantage of a crisis”
What I’m not saying here is that this is what should happen or that this is how things should happen in a normative way. I’m simply describing that humans make progress almost exclusively in response to disaster rather than proactively preventing it.
So watching the FAA lurch to life after it delegated/abandoned its regulatory mission isn't a horrified response?
Or is that business as usual in your estimation?
plurality of citizens are horrified enough that they can put public pressure on a public figure powerful enough to force structural change
So basically only 9/11 or Perl Harbour would qualify.
Those two accidents didn't "happen here" and our news is very isolated from the rest of the world. Maybe that's what he means?
>I’m starting to treat general aviation as though it was 50 years ago: Very unsafe and expensive
50 years ago civilian aircraft deaths were, on average, 400% higher per year than now. You might want to rethink your comparison; it has never been safer to fly commercial airlines.
IIRC, less than 5 people have died in the USA in commercial airline crashes since 2010.
I'd be willing to bet it was safer to fly right before the 737 MAX was introduced than right now.
Just a gut feeling.
Gut feelings are anxieties and biases.
...and in this case provably wrong - there have been (in the USA) just 2 deaths, in all of commercial aviation, since the 737-max was introduced in 2015 - thats 2 deaths in 9 years.
In the 9 years before (2014 back to 2006) that there were ~100 deaths, so 5000% higher deaths in the 9 years before the 737Max was introduced - and even that is very, very low historically.
(and for the record, not claiming the 737Max is directly responsible for those lower deaths, just that in general - and across the board - aviation has never been safer than it is now).
In 2015 and 2016 there were 0 deliveries of 737 Max's. They were also grounded for a good part of 2019 and you are only counting one country, so your statistics should be revised.
I’m starting to treat general aviation as though it was 50 years ago: Very unsafe and expensive
General aviation* is expensive and dramatically less safe than commercial aviation. I'm not sure what that has to do with Kayak's offering model-filtering in their UI (Kayak is selling commercial aviation tickets, which has nothing to do with general aviation).
* - Civil aviation, minus commercial air carrier minus aerial application, pipeline patrol, etc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_aviation
General aviation is and always has been unsafe, due to the prevalence of single engine aircraft and unskilled pilots.
Did you mean commercial aviation?
using it will provide a very _visible_ signal to the airlines. If they're losing ticket sales
They’re not. And neither is Boeing. If someone using Kayak isn’t willing to contact their elected, they’re irrelevant. (Complaints might register if you’re a frequent flier who books through the airline and gives written feedback. But I haven’t seen evidence of that yet.)
They're not
Boeings stock price is down 18% this month. Sure it's not because of Kayak, this is simply another data point that consumers are wary of Boeing. Boeing is massively fucking up and even though procurement cycles are extremely long, it definitely will have an impact. They are a plane and rocket company that can't build planes or rockets
Boeings stock price is down 18% this month
Due to the threat of damages from airlines for the cost of groundings and regulation. Not passengers who book through aggregators checking a box.
I’ll quote wand3r back to you:
Sure it's not because of Kayak
Neither is it because consumers are wary. They may be. But not in a market-impacting way.
“I won’t fly Boeing” is 2024’s Kony 2012.
For that to be true, the whole Boeing fiasco would have to be a hoax, when it instead seems to be becoming a very concerning pattern.
I'm very happy to learn that JetBlue is AirBus-only in this thread. I already am an anxious flyer with a trip coming up in six months and it'd be a lie to say I wasn't considering just driving, even though that's statistically more dangerous, it's a situation where I have more perceived control.
an anxious flyer with a trip coming up in six months and it'd be a lie to say I wasn't considering just driving
Sure. But someone travelling once in six months, and actively weighing flying versus driving, isn’t a market-moving customer.
I have no doubt some demand destruction is happening. But it’s not along frequent fliers. Airlines are clamouring to get their planes recertified because they know they’ll be filled.
“I won’t fly Boeing” is 2024’s Kony 2012.
I'm going to call BS on this. Airline passengers are willing to endure all manner of indignities just to shave a few bucks off their ticket price. I'll believe Boeing is in trouble after Spirit and Ryanair go out of business.
Boeings stock price is down 18% this month.
I hear Warren Buffet’s voice over my shoulder telling me “Boeing stock is on sale.” Boeing is a huge defense contractor that is never going away. Maybe this is the bottom of their current crisis and it is a good time to buy?
A stock falling prices doesn't mean it is cheap. Buffett sold J&J just because they changed management, and he probably wasn't confortable with the new bosses. They don't have any other know drawbacks, and if you read investment media each one of them has one theory.
OTOH Buffett has said many times that stocks related with flying are usually a bad investment. And even when he invest, he says that he doesn't know why he keep doing it, as he knows it's a mistake.
And finally, he usually says that he no longer buy "cheap companies to take a last puff of a cigar butt", but "great companies that are going to do great forever".
Now do the aggregate: bad management + air stock + company in decline = not cheap for Buffett. The small investor could cash a rebound if it happens, but a behemot like B&H is not interested.
Boeing is an institution. Boeing shareholders are not. If the problems are systemic, the government can put Boeing into bankruptcy to wipe the slate clean.
I bet a few people at Boeing got heartburn about this option being added.
bet a few people at Boeing got heartburn about this option being added
Sure. They’re just not the revenue folks. It’s a sign of a degraded brand. Not a per se threat.
Planes get swapped out last minute pretty often, its pretty much the only way to avoid full airline meltdowns every time one flight is 60 minutes late to take off. Hell, there was no huge meltdown in the US once the 737 MAX was grounded, twice. They just swap them out, the system knows how to do it efficiently
An evil (but working) way to bypass this once 737s are flying again, would be to put a different plane with similar layout on every flight, then swap to the 737 on the itinerary the day before
Different plane, different seat, is pretty aggressively baked into TOS
You can book with Airbus-Only carriers though like JetBlue
“ put a different plane with similar layout on every flight, then swap to the 737 on the itinerary the day before”
Question to True Believers in Free market, where is the line between free market and fraud?
they can expand production
This is MUCH, (and I must reiterate) MUCH harder than it sounds.
yeah i don't want them to do this and become as bad as Boeing in the process.
Airbus is already outselling Boeing 2-1.
What's your source? I looked up the quarterly earnings report, and Boeing reports 528 planes delivered in 2023 vs 488 from Airbus.
Just curious to know if you're talking dollar amount or what?
I don’t know the source or veracity but that’s deliveries vs new orders.
Planes being delivered this quarter were probably ordered before COVID hit in my understanding so any order differences would take a long time to show up in the delivery numbers
It's going to be very difficult to avoid the 737 MAX going forward. Airlines love these planes because they save fuel and Boeing has a waiting list for them out to 2030. AFAIK you cannot order a new 737 from Boeing that is not a MAX.
The only viable solution is an independent safety board (paid for out of Boeing profits) that supervises every aspect of design and production at Boeing and its contractors until Boeing learns how to build safe airplanes again.
"If it's a Boeing, I'm not going."
I already look for these planes and will schedule my itinerary around avoiding them.
You can try, but the point is that will only get harder, and it’s not like the economic pain will be felt in any specific sense. You’ll just fly less.
So just like almost everything else we just have to collectively accept it getting shittier and more dangerous? Decline of civilization in full effect. Bring on the diversity hiring to accelerate!
Was with you until the ignorant diversity comment
Diversity actually tends to IMPROVE results — including corporate financial results — by bringing aboard different points of view. And if you somehow still think that some races are more intrinsically intelligent than others, you're simply ignorant of the fact that the supposed racial results disparity in tests like the SAT measures more accurately disparity in opportunity [2]. There are many more references for both, and I'll stop at ignorance, but you really should get more educated before posting ignorance like that.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/karstenstrauss/2018/01/25/more-...
[1] https://hbr.org/2019/03/when-and-why-diversity-improves-your...
[2] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/race-gaps-in-sat-scores-h...
you're simply ignorant of the fact that the supposed racial results disparity in tests like the SAT measures more accurately disparity in opportunity
Literally all this chart shows is disparity in performance, thereby proving my point. Unless you're trying to say standardized tests are racist?
And if you somehow still think that some races are more intrinsically intelligent than others
Black people just have more access to sports, which is why they are more athletic. Disparity in opportunity, right? Asians just don't have access to enough basketball courts. But yeah, I'm the ignorant one.
The person above didn’t explicitly say it so I will: you’re a racist.
Evidence that board diversity benefits firms, however, has been mixed. A 2015 meta-analysis of 140 research studies of the relationship between female board representation and performance found a positive relationship with accounting returns, but no significant relationship with market performance. Other research has found no relationship to performance at all.
From your own link shows very strong evidence for a null effect (keep in mind there's strong incentive to show a statistically significant effect).
OK, for the sake of discussion, let's say that diversity of the board & exec suites has a null effect, and take a closer look at GP's statement.
That is certainly a vastly different claim vs the extreme negative effect claimed by the GP of "accelerating" everything getting "getting shittier and more dangerous"
He's literally claiming that including people from diverse backgrounds will make things shittier and more dangerous. That is literally the trope of the dangerous black man coming to destroy society. So, yes, thinking about it, I'll go beyond ignorant and call it out as racist. Because if you can say that with a straight face, you really have a deep problem with attitudes about race.
How many different points of view on "we should really tighten all of the bolts on this emergency door plug" does anyone need? :)
Your remarks make sense darn near anywhere else except a "let's all panic and hand-wring about a Boeing manufacturing lapse" thread
we just have to collectively accept it getting shittier and more dangerous? Decline of civilization in full effect.
Aviation safety has been improving, not getting worse.
https://www.icao.int/safety/Documents/ICAO_SR_2023_20230823....
It doesn't matter the colour of employees' skin. It matters how many there are, and how the company insists they act. A company that cuts its own staff, reduces the bargaining power of unions, lets its supplier fuck it even harder, and cares about volume over quality... is going to be worse.
https://www.levernews.com/profits-and-payouts-over-passenger...
"Cost-cutting was the single major reason behind selling commercial aircraft-parts operations [to] the new entity named Spirit Aerosystems [which] introduced its own cost-cutting strategy, even harsher than Boeing's"
Spirit executives explained that they "hired 1,300 fewer people than the predecessor had employed" and implemented less-favorable union contracts which "provided for wage reductions of 10%"
Boeing took advantage of Spirit's weaker union and more cutthroat business tactics by further squeezing their supplier to do faster, cheaper work.
In a federal securities lawsuit [...] some of Spirit’s former employees alleged [...] many serious production issues including "out-of-calibration torque wrenches" that mechanics were using, and "defects such as the routine presence of foreign object debris (“FOD”) in Spirit products, missing fasteners, peeling paint, and poor skin quality."
The complaint concluded that "such constant quality failures resulted in part from Spirit's culture which prioritized production numbers and short-term financial outcomes over product quality."
Is this a US thing? In the EU and i've found as long as avoid Ryanair everyone else is using Airbus.
Southwest and United have the most, so yeah.
https://simpleflying.com/boeing-737-max-airlines/
Americans fly the most out of any country though, so it’s unsurprising America also buys the most planes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_airline...
United is absolutely horrible, so I’ve been actively avoiding them for over a decade.
Southwest was my go to, but I’ll happily fly a crappier non-boeing airline if it’s an option.
I don't care for any airline, but while I see your disgust for United expressed often I haven't had any issues with them. Granted I only fly them a few times a year. Either they've improved a lot or I have been lucky!
Comparing the 737 max (all variants) to nearly any other passenger transport shows that it is safe and we are seeing why in real time. An issue happened which correctly caused immediate grounding and inspections followed by an in-depth review and likely corrective action both to the issue and the practices that created it. Implying it isn't safe is continuing to feed a false narrative that encourages unreasonable fear of flying and is holding aviation back.
Except if part of the wall goes flying off you mean?
it does seem like there's been an uptick in "incidents" involving boeing planes, in particular, and maybe that's because of the fallout of the merger between boeing and md (https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-merg...), and even then i'm not sure if that's _statistically_ accurate. this does not, however, invalidate the CP premise that it's generally safe to fly, even on the Max series and that is largely because this part of the process is working (grounding, checking, remediating) even if the development and manufacturing processes have failed.
however, i'll also agree with you that being subject to the effects of iterative improvement is uncomfortable in the air transport context.
Or if the still-not-redundant air speed sensor fails.
There’s also the recent report that parts of the tail wing were not properly torqued, and they’re internally falling apart.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll repeat it: yes, flying is statistically safer than other forms of transport to the point that you’re more likely to die on your way to the airport than on a flight.
BUT that knowledge shouldn’t be used to become complacent to the point that we let things slip, nor should it be used to ignore other indicators that could signal a negative trend.
“And we are seeing why in real time” only plays into that complacency because it suggests that the post-incident acts are the goal, while it used to be that they’re means to a goal, the goal being that they’re not needed in the first place.
In particular, with the door plug, the issue is that they go against best practices that have been established yesteryear (i.e., making them bigger than the hole and plugging from the inside to leverage cabin pressure instead of working against cabin pressure) and that’s aside from the knowledge both inside Boeing and supplier Spirit AeroSystem of quality issues.
On a macro level, there’s a more considerable erosion of aviation safety at play, however, especially in the US. This erosion has only marginally led to increased deaths (albeit preventable) but has significantly increased the level of near-catastrophic events. This, in my humble opinion, is an essential signal in terms of potential future fatalities.
I’m talking about:
- things at the manufacturer level, of which Boeing with their 737 MAX fulfills an emblematic role (e.g., MCAS, door plug, loose bolts, etc); - regulators’ lack of proper enforcement (e.g., FAA being extremely hesitant to ground planes after the MCAS incidents, making them one of the last ones to do so, FAA being extremely deferential in the certification process, allowing Boeing to essentially self-certify most of the essential stuff, if not outright granting them waivers or allowing Boeing to omit information about specific systems from flight manuals); - lacks regulation on crew hours, leading to fatigued crew; - overworked and understaffed ATC; - “safe enough” mentality when it comes to protocols at and around airports to increase the number of movements
The list goes on and on. The common denominator? Money.
It’s cheaper and more expeditious to let Boeing evade proper certification and to let them sell a range of different models under the same type certification.
It’s better for the economy not to ground planes made by America’s darling manufacturer.
It’s cheaper for American airlines to only count the hours the planes’ doors are closed as work hours and to not be too strict with mandatory rest requirements.
It’s cheaper to hire contractors to do ATC and to have one person do a job that would be safer to split amongst 3, especially when it costs more to attract two more people.
It’s cheaper to cram more planes onto a runway than to spread them out; it also makes more money for airlines and airports. So it’s better to have pilots do a visual approach and visual separation; not only does this unload some of the responsibility to the pilots, freeing up ATC resources, but it also requires less separation, which means more movements at the airport. This practice has the blessing of the FAA, by the way, this is straight from the FAA Safety Alert For Operators SAFO 21005[0]. IFALPA, in turn, released a bulletin to highlight how the US practice isn’t in line with ICAO practices and to advise non-US pilots on how to handle this[1].
On their own, none of these might immediately lead to a noticeable effect in aviation safety, but combined, they most certainly do.
For every incident that makes headlines, ten never make it into mainstream news, which hides the significant uptick in near-catastrophic events[2].
So yes, while statically aviation is a safe mode of transport, it doesn’t help to proclaim that “there’s nothing to see here folks, everything is super safe.”
It’s a miracle nobody died in this door plug incident, a straight-up miracle, and not the result of some grand safety design.
Any attempt to paint it as other than a miracle is just confirmation bias.
0: https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/SAFO21005_0.pdf
1: https://ops.group/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/21atsbl04-...
2: https://sfist.com/2023/08/21/close-calls-on-sfo-runways-are-...
The only viable solution is an independent safety board (paid for out of Boeing profits) that supervises every aspect of design and production at Boeing and its contractors until Boeing learns how to build safe airplanes again.
At this point I’d go further than that. Their ability to manufacture and sell aircraft should be at stake. This needs to be an existential threat for Boeing to take it seriously.
It's going to be very difficult to avoid the 737 MAX going forward.
Maybe. Delta doesn't currently have any 737 max and they have ordered 100 max 10s, but they aren't approved by the FAA yet and they might change their order. There are still airlines that prefer airbus.
How long until airlines start to advertise that they don't have 737 MAX in their fleets? Or no Boeing planes at all?
The recent 737 Max issue doesn't seem particularly aircraft specific. If the QA and culture have gotten that bad then it could happen to 787 just as easily.
I doubt however this will ever move the needle in terms of passenger numbers. Even for those people who are aware of the issues, a tiny minority of them would pay more to avoid a particular aircraft model.
Frontier Airlines, Hawaiian airlines and Azul Brazilian only operate Airbus aircraft
Yea but Qantas never crashed.
Azul also has 40 ATRs and (naturally) Embraer. They actually do operate 2 Boeing 737-400 for cargo use.
Randomly picked Hawaiian airlines to see what mechanical failures their aircraft have had and I get this list:
- Most recent in 2023: significant problems and disruptions due to problems with the Pratt & Whitney PW1100G engines in their A320neo aircraft - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_PW1000G
- Mid-air diversions: several Hawaiian Airlines flights forced to divert to different airports due to mechanical problems. One example is Flight 383 from Honolulu to Kauai and had to return to Honolulu shortly after takeoff due to unspecified issues - https://liveandletsfly.com/hawaiian-airlines-lax-diversion/
- 1994: Flight 481 experience complete hydraulic system failure en route from Maui to Honolulu - https://archives.starbulletin.com/2000/12/25/news/story3.htm...
etc.
Yup, some flights are going to be extremely unlikely to change and are basically always 100% booked. QF10 London-Perth (Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner) will not be affected at all by a non-trivial percentage of people refusing to fly it. There's not enough supply on those routes and Qantas can fly whatever they want there.
I doubt however this will ever move the needle in terms of passenger numbers.
Maybe, but these things have a momentum and it’s very clear things are moving in an uncomfortable direction for Boeing.
I don't think airlines will do that, because having at least two (more would be of course better) competing manufacturers in the market is better for them, so they have to hope that Boeing survives even if they don't currently use their planes...
It is like Samsung shitposting on Apple about removing the 3.5 mm audio port, enjoy the marketing stunts, and then remove it themselves a coupl eof years later. All companies and their PR teams know the memory retention of their audience is tiny. I'm honestly surprised the airlines that dont have Boeing 737 in their fleet are not taking this opportunity to make a splash yet.
If there is a way to be more profitable this year, with a potential issue several years away, what percentage of companies would take that chance?
Airlines take the quick money every time as far as I can tell.
>Or no Boeing planes at all?
That will never happen, the federal government would never allow it, and they have many avenues to ensure it
1. All Future bailouts of Airlines could be contingent on them buying Boeing Aircraft
2. Direct Bail out of Boeing to make them the most inexpensive plane to buy
3. Regulation to prevent advertisement of aircraft type
4. Increase import tariffs or other protectionism to make Airbus and other manufacturers more expensive
Boeing is a national defense contractor and it too important to our national interests to be allowed to fail, if the 4 things I listed above do not happen something else will will prevent Boeing from Going under, or even losing market share.
Even if Boeing lost its entire civilian market as a result of this sort of thing (which is not plausible) it'd survive as military contractor; it might have to be restructured, and the shareholders would probably be wiped out, but it would survive. Note that Lockheed still exists.
And Boeing would likely not thank the US government for this sort of 'help', because it would be read as, essentially, a trade war, and provoke retaliation. Most of Boeing's market is outside the US.
And also, I mean, this already exists. There are large single supplier airlines. JetBlue is an all-Airbus airline. Southwest and Ryanair are all-Boeing.
Boeing's reputation in military circles seems to be, if anything, worse than it's civilian one.
Ryan air exclusively uses 737 and as far as I know they only had 2 incidents, one being a fake bomb threat and the other (bird strikes) proving the plane was safe
It's (by far) the largest airline in Europe and the third largest in the world in term of passengers per year, I don't see them going anywhere because of the 737 max issues
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ryanair_accidents_and...
Both Boeing and Airbus planes have had mechanical issues, and I don’t think it’s in any airline’s interest to start slinging shit about passenger safety.
I don’t think they would go for that. Airlines do not want customer to think about the possibility of a crash at all.
Except during the pre-flight safety presentation, the airlines generally don't want you thinking about safety at all. Simply advertising that they don't have a particular incident prone aircraft in their fleet makes customers think about all the things that could go wrong. A press release highlighting that they don't have that particular aircraft in their fleet during the news cycle of an incident should be sufficient enough.
Do a significant amount of people actually worry about this when booking a flight? The chances of incident, even on these models with recent incidents is still so unbelievably low, no?
I guess it's a form of being able to vote with your wallet; forcing the manufacturers to spend additional money/time on QC.
The risk is low, but voting with your wallet is the only tool available to regular people. If you're unhappy with how Boeing has been handling their business, what other actions are available to you?
In the U.S., organizing to get one's congressman to take action.
It's probably a big uphill battle due to industry lobbying, but I expect it's possible if there were enough popular support.
I have a pilot friend who told me he wont fly (even as a passenger) on any Max. He flies Boeing 737s.
I’m not sure a pilot who has never flown the type is really any better positioned to judge this than anyone else, but I do think that if he feels that way, a whole lot of non-pilots do too. If you know pilots you know they are not a cautious lot generally. While they get a metric shit-ton of caution trained into them, there are a whole lot of cowboys in the flying world.
People don't make these choices based on probability, it come down to whether you see as worth your time and money to think about it.
That's the same for buying a super sturdy SUV for commuting. Your overall chances of getting into an accident where you'll be crushed between two semi is astronomically low, but many people will still choose that option over just a normally safe car.
The question comes down yo how much they'd bare disruption to assert that choice, and it doesn't look to me like a costly or super problematic choice here
Yes. I do. It's a small risk but one that I can trivially avoid. It takes seconds. Why not?
And as you said. Force them to clean their act up.
Yes, they do but only for a finite amount of time and most will board the plane because realistically they “don’t have any other choice” given their timeframe ( going home for Christmas, attending a meeting in the morning, etc ). However long term they internalize ( rightfully ) Boeing equals bad and danger. If an airline comes up and announces all their fleet is now all brand new Airbus people notice and prefer that, airlines know that and if the numbers are close they’ll run Airbus. However.. aircraft buying and operation is an incredible complex world, history and politics are a huge factor too, safety is not a factor, “risk” is, they overlap but are not really the same. Most of this will go away in a month or two, until the next plane goes down.
What's the downside for you? If you don't care just ignore it.
Having the option, even if rarely used, is a good signal to bean counters that cutting corners on safety or quality or even leg room is unacceptable.
I don't think people realize that their taxi to the airport is significantly more dangerous than flying in a 737 MAX.
lately Im amused by this because I actually got into a car accident on my way to airport (was in an uber/lyft that got rear ended on a highway) So for trips to and from the airport, they have been more dangerous for me lol.
statistically (from a certain perspective) i agree with you but cold statistics dont explain the reality of existing as a human being. there's something about flying in a thin, aluminum/composite tube with 100-300 other "souls" many miles in the sky that many find extremely uncomfortable. the magnitude and scale seem to be perceived differently by the human psyche.
additionally, once we dive deeper into the statistics, it may be worth evaluating deaths, critical injuries, and minor injuries dimenions by different measures (per transport, per capita, per accident/incident). i wonder what story those analyses would tell.
Sure, but avoiding that risk is inconvenient, whereas going for a 737-800 or A320 over a 737 Max may be no effort at all depending on the flight (this sort of thing is really bad news for Ryanair if it catches on, say; Ryanair's most important routes are typically of the 20-flight-a-day variety and there's lots of competition who don't have Maxes).
Hum, no. The safety track of that plane specifically is bad enough that you are not automatically correct.
So yeah but I think the experience might play a difference, going down from 10000 mt is a different dying experience from being hit by a car and don’t live through anything
And this is what I do:
Pick a taxi that won't speed or make dangerous merges.
Pick a taxi with working seat belts.
Pick a taxi that uses a modern car for modern safety features.
When available, take the train.
Don't take a helicopter to the airport.
This is like saying you shouldn't wear helmets while bicycling because you're more likely to die on your commute to work anyways.
Forget the 737 MAX--this lets you exclude regional jets! Never see a CRJ-200 again! The worst passenger jet in the sky.
I feel like the Embraer 175 and 195 and the little Fokker jets can compete for that title.
i actually quite liked the porter E175E2 i flew on, CRJs can go eat shit for sure though
The ERJ-140 would like a word. The three-seat-wide single cabin is so claustrophobic, it gave me a panic attack once, resulting in years of flight anxiety I had not had previously.
great way to get a nice close up view of the mountains when flying Vancouver, BC to Seattle, though!
well good that they allow them to include models as well. Some people like living dangerously
lol. i'm looking for a flight on the Tu-104 please.
Me IRL
Some people also find certain models more comfortable for longer flights. To the degree I look at the plane model (and seating) that's why I care.
With all the media attention, and various departments breathing down each other's necks and demanding checks, could we assume that the 737 is now the safest aircraft to fly in?
Is there some type of model or theory which dictates that doing something just after a tragedy is the safest possible moment?
This was said on aviation forums after the whole MCAS situation, with the grounding and the checks.
Yet here we are due to a door that just flown out.
I mean, I assume the passengers of Ethiopian flight 302 would have an opinion on this.
This is valid assumption when talking about particular airlines and their maintenance model, yet not good when talking about bad design.
A little indicator about technical failures (or groundings) per aircraft model would be nice to have :-)
Proxy measures about things passengers consider “bad” are probably more useful than groundings alone. Compute some score based on things like:
1) Number of passenger fatalities as a result of a mechanical failure of the aircraft.
2) Number of passenger items ejected from the aircraft during flight.
To 2) We need an app that would increase the counter for dropping iPhones automatically ;-)
Unfortunately, an elevated number of groundings can indicate two different things: A cautious, proactive regulator and good safety culture, or a more reactive/lenient regulator and a plane so unsafe, they were finally forced to act.
More Kayak related than Boeing related:
I had often heard that the best price for a flight is on the airline's website vs services like Kayak.
I didn't believe this as I knew some of the travel sites (E.g. Expedia) actually reserve hotel/flights spots etc.
However, recently the cheapest seat I could find for a flight on Kayak was around $3K (business seat to London) whereas the airline site had it for $2.3K.
Has made me now always check the airline site just to be sure given the savings of almost 10%.
I had thought Kayak was a metasearch product and searched airline sites on your behalf, but maybe that's changed in significant time since I was involved in online travel.
Either way, search how you like, but you'll almost always get better exception service if you are booked directly with the service provider than if you're booked as a 3rd party customer or a code share. For airfare, costs are usually similar or even a little less expensive if you book directly; for hotels, there are times where the prices are significantly different, but you may be able to get the hotel to match prices if you call them to book directly.
Exceptions would be if you have a high value relationship with a corporate travel agent, or maybe a high level amex?
If you book through an online travel agent and something goes wrong, chances are the provider will send you to the travel agent's customer support and they will be slow and may not be able to do much, because they don't have the right access.
That’s almost 25% savings rather than 10%.
It's a good idea to check both.
But in my experience it's far more often the opposite -- the airline sells tickets at the highest price to people who visit its site because they're less likely to be "shopping around". Already have more loyalty to the airline etc. Business travelers that buy directly. Etc.
While if there's a difference, the aggregator usually is the one selling for less, because people are comparing by price. Especially certain "discount" aggregators.
Also you may not have been comparing exactly the same ticket -- e.g. the more expensive Kayak seat might be fully refundable while the airline one isn't. But maybe not -- maybe you did just get lucky!
If people think that Airbus aircraft don't have mechanical issues as well, then I've got news for them.
List of accidents and incidents involving the Airbus A320 family: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...
"As of January 2024, 180 aviation accidents and incidents have occurred,[1] including 38 hull loss accidents,[2] and a total of 1505 fatalities in 17 fatal accidents.[3]"
No one assumes that Airbus doesn't have mechanical issues, but lets not overlook the next paragraph you decided not to quote for some reason:
"Through 2015, the Airbus A320 family has experienced 0.12 fatal hull-loss accidents for every million takeoffs, and 0.26 total hull-loss accidents for every million takeoffs; one of the lowest fatality rates of any airliner".
We can't ignore that Boeing has been having a particularly bad few years that are not normal mechanical problems but boiling down to neglectance.
you decided not to quote for some reason
No nefarious reason. Just didn't think it is worth getting into the relative risk debate, because that tends to go sideways.
The responses from people here who know very little about how commercial aircraft are designed, built, flown, managed and maintained shows through here. It's a bit disappointing but that's HN for you when the topic isn't computer-related.
No, there is no point in avoiding the MAX, and yes it looks silly trying to.
Listen… I don’t want to avoid Boeing because I think it’s going to crash on me. I want to avoid Boeing because as a consumer I want to inflict maximum economic pain on a company that prioritizes profits over safety.
Ah enlighten us with your broad wisdom. It wasn't Airbus that had multiple problems in the past because of multiple missing bolts in doors, rudders etc., or complete failures of planes out of greed
How sad is it that the state of the airline industry - from manufacturing to maintenance to actually flying - triggers a need for something like this?
In Foundation, the lack of the ability to fix things signaled the impending end of the Empire. We need to build a library..
But have you thought about the shareholders when they need to spend money on QA instead of share buybacks?
Pretty important feature for all people flying in Russia nowadays. People there only trust Embraer Aircrafts, because all other aircrafts can‘t be maintained properly due to sanctions.
If this is true, it's the most interesting thing I've learned from this thread.
This is great, I now want to exclude all planes but the Max to try and scoop up all Boeing Max flights I possibly can.
Unfortunately I don't have the time or the logistics would be a bit crazy, trying to reversely find a reason to fly a route operated by the Max lol.
But seriously, if people were this anal about cars or buildings or trains the whole world would come to a screeching halt.
The lesson I suppose is that when building anything it's imperative to capitalize during the period of maximal logarithmic improvement because once you arrive at the end of the S-curve and the battle of the 9s begins it gets ugly real fast.
People will start spitting in your face forgetting everything you did in the past and demanding an ever fast and sudden march to the 200th decimal place.
Trains usually don't crash because the manufacturer isn't able to build them properly
Buy a safer car, exercise, quit drinking, and improve your diet. These actions will have a far bigger impact on your lifespan than excluding 737 Max from your Kayak search results.
That said, Boeing needs a shake-up. They have become a little too cozy with the bureaucratic/political class and their benefactors.
Supid hysteria
I'm at the point now where I choose an airline based on them not using Boeing. I don't even fly that much. It's not that I'm worried much about the safety, I'm just so annoyed by their culture and the stories I've heard over the years about how they gutted a once great engineering force.
I just want to be able to exclude "basic economy" (and its synonyms). I don't want premium economy, I don't want basic economy. I just want economy. My understanding is that it's not a different cabin so isn't possible to filter for most airlines but it's extremely frustrating to track prices on google flights et Al and receive notifications of price drops only to find that they are basic economy.
I thought it would make sense to search how large Kayak actually is. It appears the there is also a pretty decent Kayak market of 500 million. I thought you might want to know:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/kayak-market-2023-2030-overvi...
More on topic, as I predicted here 12 days ago that Kayak will be filtering on Boeing (I guessed just a max-out), I will do another prediction: Boeing will fold before the US elections, which will lead to the conclusion that a single loose bolt has led to the election of Trump.
Great, until they rename the aircraft like they did for the MAX...
Boeing lobbyists furiously working to make aircraft racism illegal. Civil Aeronautic Rights Act.
This will have zero effect. First of all, this is a blip that will eventually disappear from your average passenger’s radar before the summer travel period unless Boeing is unable to satisfy FAA’s requirements in the coming months. Secondly, I believe people are mostly concerned with pricing and availability, not the aircraft type.
I always use Google Flights and wouldn't know why to us Kayak or any other flight search.
Am I missing something?
If it's Boeing, I ain't going
This is a “charge me a small premium to feel good” button. Checkbox activism. Couture retailers do this on occasion, too, from what I remember.
What a great proof of the value of 3rd parties. What airline would EVER provide such a feature?
Of course it makes sense to avoid the 737 MAX. Both at an individual and at a population level.
Someone has to win the lottery and it could be you. The fact that the probability isn't high doesn't matter when you're dying because Boeing wanted to make an extra dollar.
It also makes sense at the population level. It's clear that Congress and the FAA are not capable of overseeing Boeing. And they're too big to even stumble now, never mind fail. The solution is for consumers to punish them. That will get them to fix their problems ASAP.
This whole hubbub is hilarious to me.
People are so bad at statistics.
You know who else self-certifies their safety? Car companies. 30,000+ people die every year in car crashes in the US but that’s totally fine. (Of course I am well aware of various car company safety scandals where profit was placed above safety).
With US airline travel you have to go back multiple years before you find a single flight-related death on a mainstream commercial jet.
Meanwhile everyone I know seems to refuse public transit to the airport because of the “crackheads” and “homeless people” even though their car is way more dangerous than those supposed threats. I have to beg people I travel with to stop assuming that a taxi is going to be a better experience than a train or even a bus.
The fact that most Americans are against abolishing the 2nd amendment is also another piece of statistical ignorance. It’s such a no-brainer win on public safety but everyone is drunk on their revolutionary war propaganda from when guns didn’t even have the modern concept of bullets. You’re wildly more statistically likely to be shot by a police officer in the US than to be shot by an actual criminal in the UK because that’s how dumb enshrining the rights of killing appliances into a constitution is.
I’m all for the customer’s power to boycott, but the actual solution that will save lives is for the government and the FAA to tighten regulations and be more thorough.
For a plane type filter I’d personally use it more for comfort or perhaps CO2 emissions preferences and not safety.
For a piece criticizing people for being dumb you get a lot mixed up.
Car companies don’t certify their own safety, they have to send them in to the government to be crash tested. Car deaths don’t happen (much) because of mechanical failures, they happen because of crashes. They don’t self-certify their crashworthiness.
Most people don’t live somewhere where there’s a subway to the airport in the USA. You can count on one hand (and probably have multiple fingers left over) the number of cities where you have that option. For most people a bus adds significant time to their trip. I can take a 30 minute Uber whenever I want or a God-only-knows-how-long bus ride. Even if it weren’t for the mentally ill (but mostly harmless) passengers, a taxi is in every way a better experience than a bus, and still negligible risk, it just costs more.
Even if we could abolish the second amendment that still leaves over 300 million guns here, and this may surprise you but people also sell things illegally. The problem isn’t the law, it’s that people want guns.
There wouldn’t be 300 million guns in citizens’ hands without the law existing in the first place. That’s why the law is dumb.
Laws can be changed. There’s no obligation to double down on them. We don’t keep lead pipes legal just because it’s very costly and time-intensive to replace all of them. That’s only an argument to start sooner rather than later. Guns would be a cakewalk to take off the streets compared to lead pipes. For one thing, guns need a consumable to function at all (ammunition).
Yes, car makers self-certify. You are not correct about that. Government crash tests aren’t a prerequisite to being allowed to sell a vehicle.
Example source:
https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/some-cars-will-ne...
You can also ask ChatGPT if you want.
And then here we go with the carbrain argument “the only option is cars, America is set up for cars.” That was and continues to be an intentional choice. It is not irreversible. It is not something that we are forced to double down on just because that’s been our choice so far. Every time a road is built or a highway is widened that’s an intentional choice that is no less intentional or costly than sending the money toward transit options or pedestrian/cycling infrastructure.
The Netherlands had this exact same problem in the 70s and reversed it. Something like 90% of daily trips are under 5 miles, which is less than 30 minutes on a bike. The Netherlands has zero cities that are as populous as the top 10 most populous American cities.
“The bus adds significant time” but that’s the thing that people say who never take the bus. Can you work on your laptop while you drive? Can you read while you drive? I can do that on the bus. Sounds like I get time back, and my ride is statistically 10x safer.
Also, when it comes to large urban areas, you have to remember that most people live in them. That’s why they’re large urban areas. A New Yorker who never drives anywhere isn't someone who “doesn’t count” because they live in New York and it’s an anomaly. More of America depends on public transit than you think.
When the second amendment was written, guns were primitive and not much of a problem. Law and order was less institutionalized. People were afraid of being occupied by a foreign government because they recently had been. I agree that if they knew what we know now, they probably would have worded it better. But repealing the second amendment now won’t make things better. We made drugs illegal, how’s that going?
The article you posted said that 97% of the cars on the road are crash tested by the government. I think my statement on that is substantially accurate.
In America, most large urban areas do not have extensive trains. I’ve lived all over this country, the only places I can think of where most of an urban area can take any sort of train from most of the city to the airport are NY, Boston, Chicago. There may be some I’m missing, and even in those cities, they don’t cover the entire area. Probably at least 75% of the country can’t walk from their home to a train and take it to the airport.
America’s infrastructure is entirely beyond my ability to control. I can take a one hour bus ride and read I am sure but I’ve got stuff to do with my day, so I’ll take the 30 minute Uber with no nutjobs yelling at thin air.
I think you’re also getting confused between population and population density. The US has a population density of 1/12th the Netherlands. You can bike just fine around our densely populated areas, though our poor bike lane design makes it far more dangerous than driving. The Netherlands has a small population but they live much closer together which is what matters for public transport cost. It would cost an order of magnitude more here to provide the same level of service, so we don’t. Maybe we should but when I need to get to the airport that’s not really on my mind.
DC has the most convenient airport for transit access; if you park, you literally have to work through the train station to get to the airport. Atlanta has a mediocre train system, but it has excellent access to the airport. Philadelphia has a mediocre connection to the airport, but stronger system overall. SFO also is reasonably accessible by BART.
Indeed, the only US city I can think of with a large urban rail system with an abysmal airport connection is LA, although LA's rail transit network in general is just a smorgasbord of sadness.
Yeah, that's because there's large expanses of land in Alaska or the West where literally nobody lives. But most people live in urban environments of some kind; the fifty largest MSAs account for over half the population (too lazy to do the math to get the exact number), and even the fiftieth largest is of a size that would, in Europe, have a functional transit system of some kind.
Perhaps fair counting DC. SFO does have it, I’m not sure even half of the people going to/from the airport have access to BART/Caltrain but I am ok counting it too. NYC, Boston. Anything else?
Go down the list of the biggest cities (all of which I’ve spent time in and commuted to an airport except DC) and ask if the average person can walk to a station and get to it and it’s like 90% NFW.
https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_ci...
A lot more Americans live in a city that looks like Houston than NY.
(Though I have a place in Phoenix and the tram system is getting better by the year and it is quite possible they’ll change categories.)
Philly has a very good airport line - I figure most of the Eastern Coast will? Less sprawl here.
City population isn't the right metric to use; you want to use metro population, i.e., MSAs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area).
Most of the cities in the US don't have a functional mass transit system, but there is no population density reason they couldn't.
even NYC is a stretch in terms of airport access. There is no one-seat ride to any airport unless you live along the route of the LGA bus, which makes it very unpleasant to schlep a 45lb checked luggage to the airport
People aren't (physically) addicted to guns. If only there were data from other countries...
Few people are demanding public transport spanning entire sparsely populated states.
There are enough cities in the US with comparable population densities to e.g. Amsterdam.
Just for the record, the 2nd amendment is not a 'law' - it is a right guaranteed by the constitution.
while it is a simple process to change a law - rights guaranteed by the constitution necessarily and by design, have a much higher bar that must be crossed in order to change - and there is currently not even close to enough people in favor in enough states to revoke the 2nd amendment.
Yes you’re right, it’s not technically a law.
I’m the odd duck in thinking that almost any country would easily find 3/4 of its state/provincial legislature votes needed to approve a repeal of an amendment similar to the 2nd amendment. I am more than baffled by the logic behind keeping it around.
Even the most progressive segments of the US aren’t generally in favor of getting rid of it entirely.
The list of countries with similarly permissive gun laws is basically one-hand’s worth, and none of them are G20 countries. Basically the United States is in the company of Yemen and almost nobody else.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_of_gun_laws_by_nation
(Check out the “comparison” section with the maps)
Anyway, sorry, this is horribly off-topic.
Yeah but the laws enforce the limits. A tank is an 'arm' as is a bazooka, but you can't buy either of those with operable weapon systems.
And anyway, to your original points, air travel got a lot safer in the last 40 years because of government intervention. Same with cars, perhaps even more dramatically. That’s why the hubbub now. The government intervention was decreased and the safety seems to have gone down. (This is true of both the mechanical and operational aspects, see all the articles about increasing runway incursions and near collisions.)
Correlation != causation, but one doesn’t have to be ignorant of statistics to suspect the system failure is at least in part due to letting corporations self-certify.
We don’t want the regulators to wait until there’s another crash to do something about it.
Safety stats are lagging indicators.
I think it is naive and dangerous to simply blame profit motive for the problems at Boeing, Profit has always been goal at Boeing, and I assume is also a goal of Airbus and every other manufacturer.
So if something has changed recently maybe one should look at other corporate priorities that have in reality supplanted profit as the number one goal for many corporations.
In fact Maybe a return to profit motive is what we need to resolve the problems
So, you could certainly argue that the Max is a result of a fixation on _short-term_ profit; it was arguably an attempt to push an existing design maybe a bit too far, rather than taking the short-term hit and designing a modern competitive plane in the size category. The trouble with that is, the payoff period is longer, so if the decision makers are overly fixated on “number goes up”, well.
I doubt the door bolts issue has anything to do with the type rating hack they did.
That is literally twice as dangerous.
Actually... 737 MAX is roughly 30 times as dangerous as the other planes in its category (eg. A320).
Source: https://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm
Every MAX flying now has had updates made to address the two events captured in those statistics, so those stats capture something different than today’s reality.
They're all being put together by Spirit Aerosystems which is a company that makes zero gross profit and has interest rate payments which are half of its gross revenue on top of that, which was spun off out of Boeing in order to aggressively cut costs and bust unions and fluff up Boeing's stock price.
That hasn't changed at all.
Spirit Aerosystems also does work for Airbus.
"Our business depends largely on sales of components for a single aircraft program, the B737 MAX"
-- Spirit Aerosystems 2022 10-K filing
They do 3 times as much business with Boeing than Airbus.
(Airbus may also wrap Spirit in their own Q/A process to mitigate the issues, which Boeing is certainly lacking)
Different purchasers can have different expectations of quality and pay the company differently;-)
If you apply this reasoning to the MAX statistics, then you have to apply it to the statistics of all the other planes, too, which also received various changes and updates during their service lives improving their safety and you are back to square one, that is MAX is much less safe than other planes
It is definitely fair to apply that to other planes. e.g the DC10
That's the problem with the reputation and the perception of safety. If you lose it then even if you finally fix the underlying issues people will still have a hard time believing you.
The point is that you will still not win the lottery if you buy two tickets.
I love this analogy, thanks!
It’s because of that type of sentiment that Boeing has been doing what they have been doing.
Until one day you close the bedroom door 5% harder than usual and the whole house collapses.
Why do you think we should surrender the tiny amount of agency that we still have, in the face of corporate profit-driven deterioration?
For me, this isn't about a measured risk in relation to other known risks in my life (crossing the road, cycling, drinking alcohol). It's about removing a totally unnecessary risk caused by greed and corporate heedlessness.
A similar case: I stopped eating British Beef when a British minister fed his daughter a beefburger[0] to 'prove' it was "totally safe", during the 'Mad Cow Disease' (BSE) crisis in 1990. I wasn't significantly worried about contracting BSE at the time, but the lengths and efforts that the government went to, to convince people to eat more beef for 'patriotic' reasons, when the farmers had fed their cows on ground-up carcasses for economic gain, meant that my boycott was a small but meaningful expression of my own agency when faced by this sort of appalling behavior.
I feel the same way about Boeing, and about the greed of airlines (like RyanAir), that think only about profit and see passenger safety as an irritating distraction that is only important in terms of 'brand perception'.
[0] https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/bse-crisis-john-se...
You may choose to not fly on a boeing plane for political reasons. But if you are concerned about risk, it’s not about comparing the risk of a flight in Max vs riding a bicycle. It’s about a flight in Max vs say, an A320.
What I am saying is that those respective risks are so tiny that they are immaterial, and not worth worrying about. If you want to spend energy making your trip safer, you should worry much more about what car model will drive you to or from the airport, or level of crime in public transports, etc.
These are not political reasons. I'm for many years now trying to avoid flying on the 737 MAX and 787. Not because I dislike the planes even as a passenger, or because I worry about crashing, or because I have a political agenda. I want to use the little bit of voting with the wallet I have. This is the core of how our system works.
I understand that in the grand scheme of things this is not really doing anything, but if a sufficient number of people make airlines uncomfortable they will increase the pressure on Boeing to improve their processes.
The current duopoly/monopoly on aircraft manufacturers is preventing innovation in the space and I do not appreciate this a single bit.
Technically, voting with your wallet is a political statement, which you are sending to Boeing management and shareholders to make the world a tiny bit less profit-at-all-cost-driven.
It is interesting that people automatically equate "political" with party or country politics, which gives it a bad rep. When in fact it is a healthy thing if more people were to think and act like you and stand for their principles on issues however minor-sounding.
This must be why corporations are people in the US. Voting with your wallet is an economic statement, not a political one. It can be done for any reason, let alone an ideological one. Not letting your kid go bungee jumping because you feel it unsafe is not a political statement.
Flying on a Boeing plane is incredibly safe, millions of people do it incident free every year.
Bungee jumping is actually a great comparison, because it’s also an incredibly safe activity, with only two dozen or so people dying in this century.
To put it in comparable terms, and based on random Googling, bungee jumping is approx 2 micromorts, compared to swimming, which is 12, and flying, which is 2.1 per 30,000 miles flown.
No it's not. It's a statement, yes. Not a political one necessarily.
I stopped buying El Monterrey frozen burritos last year. They removed some of the beef and replaced it with filler rice. I did not appreciate that cost-cutting, so I stopped giving them my money. It's not a political stance that I have here, it's an economic one. I don't like shrinkflation so I don't reward it.
I will refuse to buy any GM car because they made a decision to juice their subscription revenue. This has nothing to do with my political stance. It's an economic decision.
And so with the Boeing planes. They're obviously cutting corners in their safety department. The result is still a mode of travel that's really safe, but the way we got to that level of safety is by not cutting corners. I may decline to reward a company that has decided to trade a little of that hard-won safety margin for some better financial numbers.
I hear this sentiment a lot. And logically, it is true. But maybe it's my cynic nature, but isn't this like counting on a natural disaster level of impossible? This is something which can happen but has happened in history very few times (I personally can't think of any instances, but there has to be some company ruined by a boycott). I am not saying you are wrong, but I find this a naive view.
Edit: Let me clarify a bit. I am not saying companies have not taken feedback through what sells and doesn't sell, that of course happens. But I don't know of many instances where individuals spontaneously or otherwise caused a company to change their internal structures and processes. The implication that consumers have a knob to finetune a company process is what I disagree with.
I understand your reasoning and completely agree with it, but I suggest that if you feel strongly about this that you put some effort into actual politics, because in my opinion the only way that issues like these are solved is by regulation and giving teeth to agencies charged with it. Unfortunately our consumer dollars are insignificant to a company like Boeing supplying a very high-value market that is incredibly inelastic and 'too-big-to-fail', so the only way to dis-incentivize evil behavior is by punishing them for doing it.
If you don’t like the free market you can go live in … well. Maybe err. Well, you should like the free market.
I don't think they're as small as you're saying. There have been multiple well documented incidents with 737 MAX that have not been with the A320. Maybe you think it's small enough to not worry about, said incidents are enough for me to want to avoid that aircraft entirely. Absolute risk is certainly still low, but I'll take the safer in comparative risk any day there.
Paying attention to planes and risks of other forms of transport are not mutually exclusive.
If people want to exercise choice - by all means, and I’m happy at the margin to punish Boeing, but I agree from a personal risk standpoint it’s probably inconsequential.
I’m always amazed at where people spend energy mitigating risk, I had a coworker who was worried about taking the Covid vaccine but was hardly the picture of health and rode a motorcycle to work many days - it’s like putting down the beer, eating a salad, and taking the bus will give you massive gains in life expectancy vs some minor unknown delta with the Covid vaccine, but to each their own. I just wish we could get people to use micromorts (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort)
I think if you zoom out you’ll realise that none of us actually know much about risk of things we’re doing.
Like there’s a hundred ways changing your diet could harm you rather than help even if you think you’re reducing your risk.
I don’t disagree, but I'm also not talking about debating a Mediterranean diet vs keto, I’m talking about cutting out fast food and big gulps…
my favorite was watching people - riding a bike in traffic without a helmet - but wearing a mask (even when not required by law).
Talk about not understanding risk.
Speaking of which - the probabilities are exactly the same for passengers as cabin crew and there is no compounding effect :p
Number of times you roll the dicey has no effect on probabilities and thus no impact on whether make sense.
I’m not doing this often this can swallow more risk is very human thinking
If two people perform an action with 1/10,000 chance of death, but person A performs it once per year and person B performs it 10,000 times per year, whose life is more heavily dependent on the underlying fatality rate of the action?
See also - vending machines kill more people than sharks do.
Only if you want to meaure the number of times you die on average. But you typically want to measure the risk of dying once over a career as a crew, and that is very much a function of how many times you roll the dice. Your probability of survival is 1-(prob of no crash per flight)^(flight count), and it is not linear. Whereas a passenger plays the game many less times.
If you don't take my made up numbers but wikipedia [1], and if I get my math right, B737 max has 4 accidents per millions flights, vs 0.2 for previous B737. That means that over a career of 15 years, working 200 days per year, 3 flights a day, a crew has a chance of dying of 3.54% with the Max vs 0.18% for the older models. 0.18% might be non material but 3.54% starts to be significant. (a passenger that takes 10 B737 max flights a year over that period only has a 0.06% probability to die).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX#Accidents_and_i...
I agree that people are bad with probability like you explain
However, I think the issue with the 737 MAX is that it's been involved in several high profile catastrophic mistakes while only being in service for a few years. It's expected that a page in service for 20 years might have wear and tear that leads to issues... But brand new planes crashing back to back shortly after being released..
The stats on the Wikipedia page state that the MAX has 4 fatalities per 1 million flights, while the prior generation has 0.2 fatalities per million flights [1]. Of course, some if this is due to the two crashes right out the door, and if excluded, perhaps they are similar... But then this new door blowout issue occured... And after investigation multiple planes had the same issue (so it likely is a production issue, not an individual worker screwing up one time).
Overall I agree plane model should mean little to travelers... But the MAX is trying very hard to prove it's a lemon.
1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX
A 20-year old plane is probably safer than one fresh off the assembly line, given how long they are usually in service: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve
Not to defend Boeing since the circumstances of the MCAS controversy didn’t involve honest well-intentioned design mistakes, but I would argue that reliability is a bathtub curve so a new plane model having more issues is expected.
I’m sure it’s to exclude the MAX but I like it so I can find specific planes I want to fly. The old narrow/wide body filter wasn’t granular enough.
Agreed. I fly between the UK and US a few times a year, and if I could filter by expected plane type for comfort on an 11 hour flight, I would.
I don't do a hard filter up-front, but for longer flights, I'll definitely look at plane type and seating availability before I book if there are reasonable options (for comfort reasons).
It's the only tool or mechanism available to regular consumers by which they can vote with their wallets. If you're unhappy with how Boeing has been handling their business in recent years, this is the most amount of influence a regular person can exert. Even if your individual risk is miniscule, it serves as a tool to signal discontent.
They can vote with their vote too. If regulators do their job, grounded airplanes start to become quite a large expense for airlines and influence their fleet choices.
Indeed. But, don’t forget you can vote with your political vote - or even better - with civic participation: this is the most effective way to make change happen.
Not only that but the crew is much more informed and qualified to make a decision and it's their life on the line as well.
There will always be incidents no matter how rare, investigations will always show that the something could have been done better because nothing can be done perfect, the press will always inflame the public and the public will want to have an opinion/decision no matter how out uninformed.
Your "plane A" number is off by an order of magnitude. The "plane B" number is about right.
Now you will certainly find it interesting to look at the safety profile of your other activities. And estimate repeating those risks through your life. That order of magnitude makes all the difference in the world.
I don't care as much about the immediate risks as I care about punishing Boeing for their management culture -- and I don't care about the model as much as the Airbus/Boeing tilt of the carrier I'm booking with.
This does mean that this utility isn't really that useful, though, and its simpler to just book with e.g. Delta over Alaska.
I think being unreasonably pissed about certain things is good because it provides some randomness/wildcard behavior for those who enjoy modeling the masses behavior for profit, and think making mistakes is only about the numbers. Some things should have a high cost just because.
An alternative use case: on a long flight I would prefer to fly on a 787 or A350 as these composite aircraft maintain higher cabin humidity and pressure which is easier on the body.
I think about plane models when it comes to comfort. I always prefer A350s over 787s, always prefer A320s over the 737 family because of the 737 family's more narrow cabin. I genuinely don't like flying on Boeing planes.