[HN Gopher] Is my plane a 737 MAX?
___________________________________________________________________
Is my plane a 737 MAX?
Author : jacksoncheek
Score : 455 points
Date : 2024-01-09 17:30 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ismyplanea737max.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ismyplanea737max.com)
| Igor_Wiwi wrote:
| Why 737 Max in particular?
| notac23 wrote:
| They've been having major manufacturing and software quality
| issues. Have almost killed people several times at this point.
| schnable wrote:
| In fact, theyve already killed a few hundred people.
| notac23 wrote:
| You're right. I couldn't remember so I didn't want to say
| it without being sure.
| dtagames wrote:
| Not almost. Actually. 189 people first, then 157 only five
| months later.
| pietz wrote:
| Almost?
| Closi wrote:
| Because they fall out the sky and occasionally their windows
| fly off.
| jackdh wrote:
| Well it's better a window than the front falling off.
| stephenr wrote:
| If a wave hits your plane the front falling off is the
| least of your concerns.
| danbruc wrote:
| That's not very typical!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
| CafeRacer wrote:
| Lol, I still don't know if that interview is a comedy
| sketch or real.
| cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
| On the off chance that this is genuine, it's a sketch. A
| very famous comedy duo. Unfortunately one passed away a
| while ago.
| stephenr wrote:
| It's a satirical interview about a real event:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirki_(tanker)
|
| They (the comedians) posted similar comedic takes on
| politics for many years; eg this one about Australia's
| energy market https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ELaBzj7cn14
| dtagames wrote:
| Its appalling safety record [0] thus far makes it one of the
| least safe airplanes in modern history.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX#Accidents_and_i...
| I-Robot wrote:
| That is really bad misinformation statistically speaking. The
| "Max" aircraft (all variants) have literally many millions of
| miles of safe flight. If anything, it is the most scrutinized
| commercial aircraft in all of history.
| stephenr wrote:
| I'm not going to comment on how it compares to other planes
| but it's certainly significantly less safe than the
| previous generations of 737:
|
| > a fatal accident rate of _four accidents per million_
| flights, whereas the previous Boeing 737 generations
| averaged _0.2 fatal accidents per million_ flights
| firebaze wrote:
| But even with this scrutiny glaring issues like the current
| ones have been missed.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-
| defense/boeings-o...
|
| (The most recent problem is missing yet)
| dtagames wrote:
| I'll take the 777, thanks.
|
| https://simpleflying.com/safest-airliners-all-time/
| StreetChief wrote:
| Are you equating and summing miles flown from different
| variants?! Rules and regulations apply separately for each
| variant.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Reasonable place to start:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX_groundings
| ThisIsMyAltAcct wrote:
| The 737 Max is the DC-10 of the 21st century
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| Yes. Both remember as the models one should avoid if one can.
| dionidium wrote:
| IIRC the DC-10 went on to have a stellar safety record.
| JamesLeonis wrote:
| There was a recent blowout of a door, and now several problems
| were found in subsequent MAX planes. This is part of a larger
| saga with faults found in MAX planes that have caused some
| crashes, and the longstanding quality issues with Boeing.
|
| Some previous discussions:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38917820
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38893909
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38889774
| kube-system wrote:
| Yes, but those parts in question exist only on the MAX 9,
| which is no longer flying. Right now the answer to: "Is my
| plane a 737 MAX 9?" is "no, it isn't"
| Eji1700 wrote:
| When a plane crashes, twice, totaling 300+ dead, people are
| right to get skeptical.
|
| When the investigation into those crashes reveals a
| shitload of corner cutting on safety regs, people are right
| to get skeptical.
|
| When another version of the same plane made by the same
| company has an in flight blowout and the fleet is grounded
| AGAIN (yes i know just the 9s but remind me how many other
| companies have had entire lines of their plane grounded in
| the last 20 years), then yes I think it's reasonable to
| want to avoid any of their newer plane models as clearly
| the level of safety and quality appears to be declining.
|
| Flying is still safer than just about any other form of
| travel, but that's basically because we mandated a shit ton
| of regulations and safety to make sure that even penny
| pinching corner cutting corps wouldn't have people dying in
| droves. Boeing has clearly decided to push that envelope
| and they deserve all the bad press they get for it and I
| fully understand people who already have a quasi irrational
| fear of flying freaking the hell out over this.
|
| I would certainly not buy a car from a company that's
| clearly disregarded safety so badly, and would prefer
| avoiding being in one for any other reason
| (friends/rideshare/whatever).
| kube-system wrote:
| > I would certainly not buy a car from a company that's
| clearly disregarded safety so badly, and would prefer
| avoiding being in one for any other reason
| (friends/rideshare/whatever).
|
| That's a lot of cars. The standard in the auto industry
| is to design specifically for regulatory tests, and/or
| popular industry tests, in a specific region. All major
| automakers sell cars that intentionally lack safety
| features in regions that don't explicitly require them,
| if it will give their vehicle a price advantage in that
| market.
|
| e.g. you can still buy vehicles without airbags made by
| major auto manufacturers.
| Eji1700 wrote:
| Which seems totally irrelevant given that we're talking
| specifically about Boeing failing to meet US regulations
| (and a bunch of international ones as well).
|
| Selling a car without an airbag in a country that's
| decided you don't need airbags is the choice of the
| country. If you wanted this to be similar it'd be selling
| a car in a country that wants you to have airbags, but
| yours don't work. Which would be a company I'd avoid.
| kube-system wrote:
| You specifically mentioned automakers disregarding
| safety, which was why I entertained the topic.
|
| We don't know why these doors are falling off yet. Any
| accusation that it was due to a disregard for safety
| isn't supported by any facts, yet. It is conjecture.
| darknavi wrote:
| Need to integrate this into a browser extension for when you
| purchase flights!
| Etheryte wrote:
| This isn't foolproof, airlines swap out planes to meet
| schedules and/or capacity fairly often.
| BasilPH wrote:
| The fact that this is an actual concern is wild and shows the
| depth of Boeing's problems.
| miketery wrote:
| I spoke to someone who works there about a year ago.
|
| I was trying to gauge how an insider viewed the Max problem
| related to the auto trim issue which caused two airplanes
| [1][2] to crash, killing 346 people. This was shortly after
| watching the documentary Downfall: The Case Against Boeing [3].
|
| The ignorance and non acceptance of fault made me cringe. I
| won't go into the details, but this wasn't a freak accident
| this was due to human decisions. They cut corners on how to
| modify an aircraft to compete with Airbus, and then doubled
| down to not pass down training to pilots on their hack of a
| fix, since it would be an increase in costs on their customers
| (i.e. the plane becomes more expensive to operate due to extra
| training for pilots).
|
| I am doing my outmost to avoid any new planes from Boeing
| (higher risk with new airplanes). I've also simply started
| flying less.
|
| The Boeing fiasco is what 2nd world / 3rd world corruption
| looks like in the west. profit interests above safety, and
| regulatory capture of the FAA. Also anti competitive or anti
| free trade practices by the US Department of Commerce [4].
|
| 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Air_Flight_610
|
| 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_302
|
| 3 -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downfall:_The_Case_Against_Boe...
|
| 4 -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSeries_dumping_petition_by_Bo...
| spacemark wrote:
| All valid points, but I wonder if you've overshot your
| response to this (very slight) increase of risk to your
| personal safety.
|
| The statistical safety of aviation is the best it has ever
| been - 2023 set yet another record low for commercial
| aviation deaths and injuries. Your automobile trip to the
| grocery store is far riskier.
| r00fus wrote:
| Current stats do not predict future outcomes.
|
| Especially since the FAA and transport dept are getting
| more corrupt/captured as time progresses.
| rand846633 wrote:
| There is a strong correlation between current state and
| future outcomes. Especially with physical objects that
| are, in average a decade old.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Miketery isn't trying to rationally adjust their risk
| profile based on available statistics. They are trying to
| punish Boeing for being a corrupt institution that corrupts
| other institutions.
|
| It doesn't matter how good the safety numbers are if any
| player is able to cheat and blame their safety problems on
| someone else.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| >Your automobile trip to the grocery store is far riskier.
|
| I feel it's important to provide complete information.
| Flying is safer per mile traveled than driving. Driving is
| safer on a per-trip basis.
|
| So if you compare your trip to the grocery store to your
| flight to visit extended family, the trip to your grocery
| store is safer. But if you compare 10,000 miles of driving
| back and forth to the grocery store over many trips vs a
| single 10,000 mile flight, the flight is safer.
| nyc640 wrote:
| > Driving is safer on a per-trip basis.
|
| You can't make this blanket statement and I would bet on
| average it's the opposite still.
|
| - Flying in the US is on average ~750x safer per mile
| than driving according to 2000-2010 data (it's likely
| even larger a difference in the modern era).
|
| - I would venture to guess that most US flights are in
| the 1000-2000 mile range and most US car trips are easily
| more than the equivalent 2-3 miles.
|
| - Most fatalities from flying occur during takeoff and
| landing, so longer flights are actually safer per mile.
| Relating this back to the thread, the risk of
| catastrophic failure from your choice (or non-choice) of
| airframe only really affects the off-ground danger and
| not the higher danger you face on a taxiway/runway.
|
| - All of these numbers are based purely on fatalities but
| I'm guessing your definition of "safety" includes being
| maimed or otherwise seriously injured. You have several
| orders of magnitude higher chance of being seriously
| injured in a car crash compared to flying since accidents
| in aviation are much more likely to end in death.
| miketery wrote:
| I think the critical thing to think about is the derivative
| of risk. How is risk changing over time.
|
| We are in a trend where risk is increasing.
|
| Boeing is a major institution responsible for building
| critical defense and civil technology. With many jobs on
| the line as well.
|
| People need to be held accountable, and we need a culture
| that allows people to speak up earlier and more often.
| Otherwise this will continue to happen and not just at
| Boeing but across many more critical sectors of our
| society.
| calf wrote:
| Other people don't just care about themselves, they care
| that 400 people might randomly die in the future for no
| valid reason.
|
| It's a sophisticated form of empathy, not everyone growing
| up learns it.
| duxup wrote:
| I don't disagree but generally I would avoid using " The fact
| that this is an actual concern".
|
| People are prone to being concerned about a lot of things that
| aren't a real risk to them. People aren't logical.
| MOARDONGZPLZ wrote:
| I read "actual" as modifying "concern" to the extent that it
| is a concern about something that carries real risk, not a
| concern that isn't a real risk.
| bithaze wrote:
| It's a domain registered yesterday and an account registered an
| hour ago expressly to post the website, so the barrier to entry
| isn't particularly high.
| mandibles wrote:
| It would have been great if Boeing had focused on technical
| excellence instead of financial engineering for the last two
| decades.
| ghaff wrote:
| There is also a non-zero number of people who are absolutely
| terrified of flying a plane, any plane.
| theflyingelvis wrote:
| Can't you just look at the equipment when making the reservation
| or the equipment on the "ticket"?
| bmitc wrote:
| The airline can change the plane after reservation.
| dpflan wrote:
| And then isn't your electronic ticket updated?
| bmitc wrote:
| The unfortunate thing is that they can change it at anytime. So
| you basically have to avoid airlines that have the MAX in their
| fleet, such as Southwest.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Would be cool if you can get a refundable flight and cancel
| last minute if it switches to a MAX.
| bmitc wrote:
| It almost seems it should be regulated. But it also seems the
| regulations should have prevent a shitshow of an airplane
| being deployed.
| csharpminor wrote:
| The only major U.S. airline to not currently operate the MAX is
| Delta. Frontier, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Spirit, and SunCountry also
| do not operate it.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| And Delta has an outstanding order for 100 of them, with
| delivery scheduled throughout 2025. We'll see if these
| continued incidents alter that, but I think the inertia is
| that this is what boeing selling these days. Everyone will
| have them.
| stevehawk wrote:
| On the other hand, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Spirit, Allegiant and
| others are all strapped with Airbus A320neos that are going
| to be grounded shortly due to engine issues related to P&W's
| GTF engine.
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| Surely the author should now buy ismyplanea737max9.com, no?
| sp332 wrote:
| The FAA has grounded all of them, but there is an inspection
| plan in place so they might be flying again soon.
| https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/updates-grounding-boeing-737-ma...
| yreg wrote:
| The inspection takes 4-8 hours according to BBC, so they
| might be already up in the air.
| joekrill wrote:
| This doesn't seem correct. I checked a few flights I have coming
| up and it identified a United flight as not being a MAX, when
| United itself tells me it is. And it identifies a Southwest
| flight as being a MAX when it isn't.
| duxup wrote:
| Is it possible that the planes were changed for a different one
| in light of the cancellations recently and ... one or the other
| is wrong?
| jacksoncheek wrote:
| Yeah, the data source is imperfect. The flight information
| pulls the "nearest" (live, scheduled or landed) flight that
| matches that flight number, to give you a sense of the aircraft
| on that route.
| JoshTko wrote:
| Seems like a fatal flaw in the product where precision is the
| most important aspect.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| It's next to impossible to actually answer this precisely
| at any time 3 hours before departure for airlines that fly
| both Airbus and Boeing.
|
| There will be specific planes scheduled for the flight in
| advanced, but it changes frequently up until departure due
| to regular airline logistics.
| aero142 wrote:
| Adding a date of travel and checking the scheduled tail
| number would be much more accurate.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Kind of. The 'scheduled tail number' will change multiple
| times in the days before a flight.
| addandsubtract wrote:
| Just like the 737 MAX then ;)
| itslennysfault wrote:
| Imperfect data?!?!! Well, someone isn't getting a coffee!
|
| (just kidding. This is a cool project. Good job)
| broadsidepicnic wrote:
| Wait, what? There's no point in that.. Having flown nearly a
| decade its more common than not flying the same route with
| different tail than yesterday.
| therealfiona wrote:
| Planes get changed, especially if the flight is far out.
|
| If not enough people buy a ticket for a 737-8 sized plane, SWA
| will sometimes swap it out with a 737-700 with a smaller
| capacity. This also allows SWA to fly with one less flight
| attendant than they would on the larger plane.
|
| If there is a maintenance issue with your 737-Max8, and there
| is a 737-800 sitting in the next gate not set to go out until a
| few hours after your plane, they'll swap it out to reduce the
| chance of having a late departure.
|
| If the site is not scraping data every minute, there could be
| mismatches. It's unlikely this site is scraping data more than
| once a day to save costs.
| alpb wrote:
| Are you less safe on a 737 MAX than driving to the airport in a
| car? Genuinely curious, I'm trying to understand if this whole
| saga is statistically significant.
| xahrepap wrote:
| I've heard a lot of people say this in these comment threads,
| and I think this glosses over the actual issue: safety is
| getting worse, not better or even staying the same. So it's
| MORE statistically significant than it was. The trend is
| heading the wrong way.
|
| Air safety going down is a trend you want to stop ASAP. Not
| wait around until it's just as dangerous as something else like
| driving your car.
| DennisP wrote:
| That's true, but the question might be whether you personally
| should be worried if you find yourself on a 737 Max.
| alrs wrote:
| The first worry as an American is having a pillar of your
| country's economy managed by incompetents.
| gruez wrote:
| Sounds a lot like "yeah sure, fear over 737 Max is
| overblown, but the fact that I was thinking about it in
| the first place says something about the current state of
| affairs".
|
| https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/aaaah
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| People are concerned because it seems irrefutable that
| there is corruption and a culture of cost cutting causing
| these issues.
|
| Incompetence is understandable, improperly modeling the
| physics due to lack of experience or knowledge is
| understandable, but repeated instances that point to
| corruption at the government regulator and bad culture at
| the manufacturer lend to fears that the situation will
| get worse for a while before it gets better.
|
| It's the same reason you might avoid flying on an Eastern
| European/Russian airplane. The perceived risks move from
| unforeseeable error or bad luck to systemic error.
| alrs wrote:
| It sounds nothing like that. Boeing is going to lose
| deals because carriers don't want to deal with repeated
| groundings. The US economy will reflect that.
| flashback2199 wrote:
| It doesn't matter. Nothing will change unless enough people
| begin voting with their feet.
| jen20 wrote:
| Many airlines allow same day changes. If everyone
| scheduled on a Max reschedules for alternative flights
| consistently, they'll get the message soon enough.
| Refusing to board a Boeing plane at all is perfectly
| reasonable at this stage.
| dkarl wrote:
| That's not true, and we'd get to a much, much worse place
| if we relied on that. The industry put the current system
| in place because it could see that airlines would make
| gruesome compromises if consumer choice was the only
| thing driving safety.
| flashback2199 wrote:
| What do you mean "if", anyone can choose what plane to
| fly on anytime.
| duxup wrote:
| > Air safety going down
|
| Is it?
| psunavy03 wrote:
| [citation needed]
| stouset wrote:
| > safety is getting worse, not better or even staying the
| same
|
| The only death in US major commercial aviation in ages was
| when a woman was partially sucked out of a window in 2018
| when an engine failed and blew apart, breaking the window
| open.
|
| Before that, we have the Asiana flight which crashed after
| landing short at SFO, striking the undercarriage on the edge
| of the floating platform and cartwheeling. Everyone survived
| the crash, but a woman was killed when a fire truck ran over
| her amidst the firefighting foam.
|
| Prior to that we have to go to 2005 when a plane overran a
| runway and hit a car, killing one occupant... of the car.
|
| We have to go all the way back to November 2001 to have a
| serious accident where an American plane crashed on takeoff,
| killing all on board. Technically this was due to pilot error
| due to over-responding to wake turbulence, breaking off the
| vertical stabilizer. But it's arguably an engineering issue
| that the pilot was able to induce catastrophic structural
| failure through control inputs.
|
| There has definitely been a worrying trend lately in
| _operational_ error with pilots and ATC nearly causing
| accidents due to runway incursions, nearly landing on
| taxiways, etc. But it's really hard to say with a straight
| face that major airlines have anything other than an
| exemplary safety record the likes of which has been
| completely unparalleled before now. We have had _one single
| death_ aboard a major commercial aviator in the U.S. in more
| than twenty two years.
| flashback2199 wrote:
| The only reason nobody was injured this time was nobody was
| sitting in the seats next to the door plug that blew off.
| The seat was destroyed.
| BizarreByte wrote:
| You're missing his point entirely. People are trying to
| make flying out as getting more dangerous, but that's
| factually incorrect.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _only reason nobody was injured this time was nobody
| was sitting in the seats next to the door plug_
|
| This was a serious fuck-up. But it remains that there was
| at risk no more than one, maybe two, fatalities. That
| isn't enough to justify the claim that "safety is getting
| worse."
| flashback2199 wrote:
| In a brand new plane? Yes it is.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _In a brand new plane?_
|
| Statistically, there is no difference between a new plane
| and one that's been flying for 18 years [1].
|
| Given dying because an installer fucked up feels mighty
| similar to dying because a maintenance tech fucked up, I
| don't see a rational reason to over-penalise fabrication
| errors to the extent that it overrules millions of
| successful flight miles. (Design mistakes are
| categorially different.)
|
| [1] http://awg.aero/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/09/analysisofimpact....
| flashback2199 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure if you personally drove a new car off the
| lot and the door fell off you would not believe that
| quality were unchanged from your prior impression of that
| car company.
|
| Just because it's happening to other people doesn't make
| it okay to hand-wave away safety.
|
| And by the way, so far NTSB believes it's not a
| fabrication error but an assembly error. NTSB suspects 4
| bolts were never screwed in.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _if you personally drove a new car off the lot and the
| door fell off you would not believe that quality were
| unchanged from your prior impression of that car company_
|
| As a layman, no. Were I looking for more than a Twitter
| level of analysis, it would be an indication for
| investigation. Not grounds for conclusion.
|
| More directly, even as a layman, if I were to use that
| anecdote as grounds to condemn the state of car
| manufacturing _in summa_ , that would be irrational.
|
| > _NTSB suspects 4 bolts were never screwed in_
|
| Source? Last I saw, they couldn't find the bolts. It
| takes lab work to ascertain whether they ever existed.
| flashback2199 wrote:
| NTSB are doing that lab work right now in Washington D.C.
|
| You seem to not know the meaning of suspect, so here is
| the definition:
|
| Dictionary Definitions from Oxford Languages * Learn more
| sus*pect verb 3rd person present: suspects /s@'spek(t)/
| 1. have an idea or impression of the existence, presence,
| or truth of (something) without certain proof. "if you
| suspect a gas leak, do not turn on an electric light"
|
| Have a great day sir.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _seem to not know the meaning of suspect_
|
| Suspicion doesn't mean baseless hypothesis, _e.g._ "Mars
| is an orange." The NTSB would _never_ say (and has not
| said, as you 've conceded) it "suspects" the "bolts were
| never screwed in."
|
| Were there a lack of marks where the bolts should have
| exerted clamping force, there would be basis for
| suspicion. That isn't _proof_. But it 's more than a
| hypothesis.
| flashback2199 wrote:
| I mean you can believe what you want but NTSB literally
| had a guy at a podium say into the mic last night that
| there is so far no evidence "the bolts were ever there",
| around the 17-18 minute mark if you have nothing better
| to do. Good luck with your investments.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _NTSB literally had a guy at a podium say into the mic
| last night that there is so far no evidence "the bolts
| were ever there"_
|
| Where are you getting this? Crookshanks said the NTSB had
| "not yet recovered the four bolts" and "have not
| determined if they existed there" [1].
|
| Your source, for which I'm genuinely curious, is
| categorically false in suggesting the NTSB "suspects" the
| bolts were never there, or that Crookshanks said "there
| is so far no evidence 'the bolts were ever there'". (The
| latter being particularly reprehensible, given it
| involves materially misquoting an aircraft investigator.)
|
| > _Good luck with your investments_
|
| Wat.
|
| [1] https://airwaysmag.com/ntsb-as1282-exams-all-12-door-
| plug-st...
| StreetChief wrote:
| "Only two people would have died, so it's really not that
| bad," is wild. What if it were you sitting at that seat
| and you died? Still not that bad an outcome?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _" Only two people would have died, so it's really not
| that bad," is wild._
|
| Straw man. Nobody says even a single death isn't tragic.
| What I'm saying is it doesn't overwhelm trillions of
| miles of safe flight. Not flying a 737 Max 8, only to go
| onto a Spirit Aerosystems-assembled Airbus, doensn't make
| sense. (Note: not implicating Spirit. Just saying that
| the window of culpabilitiy extends more in their
| direction than it does across every 737 Max.)
| StreetChief wrote:
| I guess if you think all miles of flight are the same,
| then sure, the 737 max 8 and 9 have trillion of miles.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _if you think all miles of flight are the same_
|
| OP said air safety is going down broadly [1]. So yes,
| considering all air transport miles is valid _given the
| context_.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38929237
| StreetChief wrote:
| more accidents is less safe, anyway you cut it. I really
| can't understand how you can view flying as not being
| less safe in this moment. If you want to do integration
| over huge time spans to make your point, lets start at
| zero and go to infinity... human lifespan is 0 years long
| average over history, seeing as we didn't exist for some
| period of time. So any changes to human life in shorter
| time spans is completely meaningless to an average. Is
| that a useful statistic?
| stouset wrote:
| I don't think we can even remotely say that.
|
| From all photo evidence I've seen, some cushions were
| sucked off the seat. These cushions are designed to be
| removed. If a passenger was seated and wearing their seat
| belt, I have every faith that they would have been
| _fine_. Uncomfortable as hell but ultimately fine. I'll
| bet money the NTSB report will say as much.
|
| And the point stands that the only reason this story is
| noteworthy is _because_ of airlines' spotless safety
| record over the past two decades. Incidents like this are
| exceedingly rare.
| flashback2199 wrote:
| It is trivial to see how someone sitting there not seat
| belted could have perished. You do understand that long
| stretches of flight allow you to be unseatbelted right?
| baggy_trough wrote:
| 1. The seat was not destroyed. 2. The door blowing off
| would not be the only reason; a second reason would be
| that the person failed to wear the seatbelt.
| flashback2199 wrote:
| We'll have to agree to disagree. I don't believe in
| blaming the user for manufacturing and maintenance
| errors. I think that makes a bad programmer too,
| actually.
| stouset wrote:
| They allow you to, but on every single flight I've been
| on in ages, the pilot makes a note that they recommend
| keeping your seatbelt fastened whenever you're seated.
| People have been injured due to sudden and unforeseen
| turbulence, and it's just a good idea in general.
|
| That said this incident occurred during the initial
| climb-out where seat belt use is mandatory.
|
| So yes, if a passenger was seated there and if their belt
| was unbuckled, I can see how somebody would have died.
| Nobody is saying that this isn't a serious fuckup that
| doesn't need to be investigated and remedied.
|
| What I _am_ saying is that major airlines in the U.S.
| have a more or less unblemished safety record for twenty
| two years, the likes of which has not only been
| unparalleled in aviation, but by _any other form of
| transport_. Literally walking is more dangerous than
| flying a major commercial airline in the U.S.
|
| The MAX line of planes in particular has had their share
| of problems, but with the MCAS situation resolved there
| is no reason to believe that it in particular is any less
| safe than any other airframe operated by the majors. The
| issue with the door plug is unlikely to be related to the
| MAX (the same part and design have been in service
| without issue since well before the MAX). It will be
| investigated, fixed, and we will in all likelihood go
| back to flying gajillions of passenger miles without
| serious incident.
|
| I'll put this another way: if all of this gnashing of
| teeth and doom and gloom causes enough anxiety over
| flying that a few hundred people choose to drive instead,
| it will inevitably cause _more injury and death_ than if
| every airline went all-in on a fleet of 737 MAXes.
| flashback2199 wrote:
| > Nobody is saying that this isn't a serious fuckup
|
| TIL half the people commenting here are nobody :)
| stouset wrote:
| I think you're misunderstanding the comments. This was a
| problem, it needs to be investigated and fixed, but the
| overreaction to this is bordering on insanity.
|
| Commercial aviation in the U.S. is still incomprehensibly
| safe. It is not getting measurably less safe. The 737 MAX
| line are not death traps.
| flashback2199 wrote:
| > the overreaction to this is bordering on insanity
|
| Not an overreaction. Not bolting on a door on a brand new
| plane is past bordering into full-on insanity.
| stouset wrote:
| Mechanics routinely forget to bolt the wheels onto cars,
| which has caused and continues to cause actual traffic
| deaths.
|
| Nobody floods into the comment sections on HN when this
| happens because people dying in cars is depressingly
| normal but planes are so unimaginably safe that a person
| _hypothetically_ getting sucked out of a plane is strange
| and terrifying.
| daedalus_j wrote:
| I was watching a video, I believe this one
| (https://youtu.be/WhfK9jlZK1o?si=goQBueaF-5So3U0X) that
| seemed to make the case that due to the door design it is
| much less likely, if not impossible, for the presumed
| failure here to occur at cruising altitude because of the
| higher pressure differential.
|
| There's a reason they tell you to always wear your
| seatbelt though, ranging from sudden turbulence/downdraft
| to sudden depressurization.
| StreetChief wrote:
| A child in the middle row had his shirt sucked off his
| body. They were only at 16,000ft, maybe half the cruising
| altitude? I forget if it's 35,000 or 50,000 usually.
| stouset wrote:
| > A child in the middle row had his shirt sucked off his
| body.
|
| You're kind of making my point for me when clothing being
| removed from a person is the most harrowing part of an
| aviation incident.
| StreetChief wrote:
| except if he was sitting at the window, he might have
| gone out too...
| sokoloff wrote:
| Commercial jets are typically cruising at 31K-36K feet,
| rarely above 39K, and almost never above 42K feet MSL.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Being American isn't equivalent to safety. It was an
| Alaskan flight that lost its door last week.
| StreetChief wrote:
| Why are you limiting events to the US? A max 9 crashing in
| the eastern hemisphere is still a max 9...
| stouset wrote:
| Because other countries have--in general--a demonstrably
| poorer track record than major airlines in the U.S. for a
| wide variety of factors, including poorer training
| programs, maintenance regimes, operational expectations,
| and sometimes cultural norms that interfere with good CRM
| (crew resource management).
|
| I'll address the elephant in the room and say that I
| don't think it's coincidence that the two airframe losses
| in the MAX 9 were with Indonesian and Ethiopian carriers
| and not American or European ones, despite American and
| European carriers having received--as far as I can tell--
| the bulk of the deliveries of this airframe and at least
| a plurality (if not majority) of hours in use (if someone
| else can find good data on this I'd be grateful). I
| suspect that more resources put toward pilot training
| played a meaningful difference here. For example, the
| first officer of the Ethiopian flight had less than 200
| hours of flight experience. This would be completely
| unacceptable for a U.S. major.
|
| I want to be clear that I am _not_ saying that it 's the
| pilots' fault, but that the swiss-cheese model relies on
| multiple overlapping failures. The additional resources
| spent on training, maintenance, operations, and CRM at
| American and European airlines in general ensures fewer
| overlaps and thus fewer incidents.
| StreetChief wrote:
| After watching Downfall, Lion air asked multiple times
| for additional training but was refused as this would
| cost boeing money. To me, that looks like Lion Air was
| _more_ aware of issues than US operators. Boeing never
| even bothered to inform pilots of the MCAS system 's
| _existence_ before the _first_ grounding.
| legitster wrote:
| > The trend is heading the wrong way.
|
| Contrary to this sentiment, air traffic safety continues to
| improve: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_accidents_and
| _inciden...
|
| If anything, air travel is so safe now that non-fatal
| incidents such as this weeks' stand out more than they would
| have in previous decades.
|
| And in comparison, driving is getting _much_ more dangerous
| (at least in the US).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U.
| ..
| not-my-account wrote:
| But, we're seeing fatal issues with one specific company
| over and over again. Knowing that there is some systemic
| failure within Boeing _must_ change your priors, no?
|
| What's wrong with pointing that out and being concerned?
| legitster wrote:
| I have concerns, but not enough not to fly.
|
| Everything I do in life is a calculated risk. If you told
| me my toaster was 3 times as likely to kill me today I
| would still probably toast my bread knowing that the base
| rate was already pretty low.
|
| If anything, knowing that all of the headline grabbing
| incidents has been confined to one product line at one
| company, and watching the amount of scrutiny they are
| receiving for it makes me feel _safer_ overall.
| gruez wrote:
| > But, we're seeing fatal issues with one specific
| company over and over again. Knowing that there is some
| systemic failure within Boeing must change your priors,
| no?
|
| "systemic failure within Boeing" isn't necessarily
| inconsistent with "air traffic safety continues to
| improve". For instance, better pilot training and safety
| regulations might make flying even safer despite Boeing
| creating more crashes.
| stouset wrote:
| > But, we're seeing fatal issues with one specific
| company over and over again.
|
| We _aren 't_. There were fatal issues with one system
| (MCAS) on one line of planes. This was addressed, and
| since then there have been zero fatalities (or injuries)
| caused by design and/or engineering issues by this
| manufacturer. Their safety record is not substantially
| different from that of Airbus (who have their own design
| issues, IMO, such as non-linked pilot controls which has
| also contributed toward hull loss and passenger deaths).
| The MCAS issue was, to be clear, completely inexcusable
| and both regulator and management heads should have
| rolled over this. I am not happy with our anemic response
| to this incident.
|
| And yes, one or two people could have potentially died
| due to this latest incident. It should be investigated
| and fixed. Beyond that there are wider aspects of the
| MBA-ification of Boeing that ought to (and I hope but
| don't expect will) drive regulatory and business change
| in this country.
|
| But the fact remains that once the issues with MCAS were
| resolved, Boeing-designed and -assembled airframes have
| resumed a track record of safety that eclipses that of
| _any other transportation industry_. Again, we can,
| should, and _are_ expecting that every issue is a
| learning moment to improve the practices of the industry
| as a whole.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| > Boeing-designed and -assembled airframes have resumed a
| track record of safety that eclipses that of any other
| transportation industry.
|
| Could you please share some data to back this claim? For
| example comparison of the number of technical incidents
| per airframe in use for Boeing vs Airbus?
| stouset wrote:
| Sure.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_accidents_and
| _in...
|
| You'll note the last time a major carrier in the U.S.
| experienced a fatality due to an engineering,
| manufacturing, and/or design error attributable to Boeing
| was in 1996, when a spark in the center fuel tank in a
| 747 caused it to explode midair.
|
| Before that, 1994. Then 1991, 1989, and 1988.
|
| We did also see one fatality aboard a 737-700 in 2018,
| but this was due to an issue with the CFM engine and
| which isn't attributable to Boeing.
|
| Given this, it's pretty obvious on face value that--
| however you slice it--flying on a Boeing airframe on a
| major U.S. carrier is safer than every other form of
| transportation, including literally just walking.
| Driving, buses, trains, trams, bicycling, scootering,
| ziplining, whatever. They're _all_ less safe.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| Can't say if you missed this on purpose or by omission
| but there's a few more after 1994.
|
| From your own source:
|
| The aircraft experienced a contained engine failure with
| debris penetrating the fuselage; one passenger was
| partially ejected from the aircraft and later died of her
| injuries.
|
| This is horrific. Boeing, of course and happened in 2018
| stouset wrote:
| I literally addressed this:
|
| > We did also see one fatality aboard a 737-700 in 2018,
| but this was due to an issue with the CFM engine and
| which isn't attributable to Boeing.
|
| There is essentially no aviation industry expert who will
| place this failure at the feet of Boeing and not CFM.
| That said, the fact that engines are designed to
| completely contain debris from a failure is _wild_ and
| speaks to the incredible standard of safety we hold
| aviation to.
| dionidium wrote:
| You'll sometimes see this dismissed almost derisively as,
| "people think they're in control when they're driving, but
| lack agency while flying, so that's why they fear the
| latter more."
|
| But that's completely true! Not every driver on the road is
| at equal risk of a fatal accident. A significant percentage
| of all fatal accident involve speeding, reckless driving,
| and/or alcohol consumption, to say nothing of distractions
| like cell phone usage.
|
| So you _do_ have quite a bit of control on the road and
| exactly none in the air.
| stouset wrote:
| Even "safe" drivers who aren't speeding, driving
| recklessly, or consuming alcohol are at greater risk of
| death and injury than on any major U.S. air carrier.
|
| So you do have control, and can put yourself into a safer
| cohort of drivers, but the best you can do still falls
| wildly short of the state of aviation safety.
| floxy wrote:
| In this age-of-big-data, it seems like you should be able
| to find data on each traffic fatality for the past ten
| years. Things like time of day, ages/demographics of
| drivers, demographics of victims, street address/gps
| coordinates, make/model of vehicles involved, blood
| alcohol level of impaired drivers, court determination of
| responsible party, etc.. Does anyone know where to find
| this?
| slingnow wrote:
| This isn't an argument about control, it's about safety.
| Control is completely irrelevant to the absolute
| probability of dying when taking one form of
| transportation vs another.
|
| You may be 100% in control of a scenario where you are
| highly likely to die, and 0% in control of a situation
| where you could essentially live until you die of natural
| causes.
|
| In this case, even if you exercise 100% of the control
| afforded to you by driving a car, you are more likely to
| die in a car than you are in an airplane.
| caskstrength wrote:
| You don't have control over drunk-driver-in-heavy-pickup-
| truck-who-is-browsing-instagram-while-speeding crushing
| into you on the road.
| yreg wrote:
| Okay, but I'm not sure fearmongering is the way to go. There
| are already people in this thread afraid of taking a flight
| in one of these machines.[0] My mother is terrified.
|
| A subthread about the actual personal risk when flying the
| MAX is perfectly valid.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38929336
| psunavy03 wrote:
| > My mother is terrified.
|
| This is more or less equivalent to the little old lady in
| this comic saying "I'm wearing this to ward off A."
| Laypeople are notoriously crap at judging any kind of risk.
|
| https://phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd051809s.gif
| jmward01 wrote:
| That is a big statement. Since 2019 there have been 32
| fatalities connected to commercial aircraft. Most of those
| were iv very small aircraft like seaplanes and helicopters.
| 32 deaths in 4 years compared to ~40k/year in cars. We need
| to keep things in perspective.
| omikun wrote:
| To keep things in perspective we should compare fatalities
| per person trips or person miles. Total deaths doesn't mean
| as much when a lot more people travel by car.
| stouset wrote:
| We do, and there has been _one_ death due to an incident
| on a major U.S. airline since November 2001.
|
| You can maybe argue two, where a woman was killed after
| exiting an Asiana plane after it crashed at SFO. She was
| hit by an emergency vehicle responding to the scene.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Asiana is not in the set of "major US airlines".
|
| Separately, major US airlines can reliably fly a daytime
| visual approach with a fully working airplane into a
| major airport.
| hardcopy wrote:
| eh. To a certain extent you should compare based on
| distance traveled, maybe. But total miles driven in the
| USA are quite high compared to other countries. Lots of
| driving simply doesn't _need_ to happen, but occurs
| because we induce it by the way we design the places
| where we build.
|
| I don't really care how safe driving is per mile, I care
| if I'm going to be dead at the end of the year.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, a MAX, crashed in 2019,
| killing 157 people.
| daedalus_j wrote:
| There's a big difference between an unsafe airframe and
| pilot error/poor-training though.
|
| For example the recent crash in Japan. Airbus isn't
| getting railed for that one.
|
| I know several 737 pilots on US flag carriers. Even at
| the time they were saying that neither crash would be
| possible for their fleet as they had done simulator
| training of exactly those sorts of scenarios.
|
| From wikipedia: While defending the pilots' actions,
| Sullenberger was also highly critical of allowing someone
| with only 200 hours of flight experience to be first
| officer.
|
| I hate sounding like a Boeing apologist, but I do think
| it's worth being very clear about where blame lies for
| things so that we can both asses risk accurately and make
| appropriate corrections.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| The was no pilot error or equipment malfunction in that
| incident. (I suppose you could look at the pilot of the
| dash 8 and wonder why he didn't hold short, but he could
| have been driving a golf cart and still made an runway
| incursion.) It didn't even happen in the air.
|
| Boeing was rightly blamed for misleading everyone about
| the nature of the MAX8. It is a materially different
| airframe, and it required different systems to be created
| to be competently flyable with 737 type rating. Is Boeing
| misleading anyone here on the MAX9? Personally, I doubt
| it. It was probably a fluke non-conforming part, since
| that plug is a carryover from other 737s. The track
| record leaves a lot of us wondering if something's up,
| though.
| daedalus_j wrote:
| > Boeing was rightly blamed for misleading everyone about
| the nature of the MAX8
|
| Pilots I am personally friends with who fly for American,
| Southwest, and United, disagree. They feel they were
| fully prepped for the differences in the airframe from
| their first flight on it, pre-crashes, and have said that
| they blame the carriers that crashed for not prepping
| their pilots the same.
|
| It's entirely possible that I missed some news, but I'm
| unfamiliar with the FAA or anyone else actually accusing
| Boeing of intentionally misleading or releasing incorrect
| information?
|
| My analogy to to Japan, while poor, was just meant to
| illustrate that we should be _very_ clear about the true
| causes of things. "Boeing lied" is a _very_ different
| problem than "Boeing squeezed a new system in, advised
| that pilots should be trained, and airlines didn't
| perform enough training".
|
| But yes, I agree that we should be wondering what's up,
| specifically with Boeing's assembly/QA processes...
| bitcharmer wrote:
| > For example the recent crash in Japan. Airbus isn't
| getting railed for that.
|
| What a bizarre comment to make. Why on earth would Airbus
| get railed for what happened in Japan?
| daedalus_j wrote:
| My point is that Boeing will take the flak for what is
| arguably a pilot error situation with the MAX crashes.
|
| We should be _very_ careful to distinguish between actual
| airframe issues and issues that are related to politics
| and poor decision making or training.
|
| There's nothing we know of that is fundamentally unsound
| about the 737 MAX airframe, there are mistakes that have
| been made in very small subset of the airframes/flights
| operating, and yet everyone is running around like you're
| taking your life into your hands every time one flies
| over your head.
| jmward01 wrote:
| I forgot to say 'in the united states'. Thanks for the
| correction. The car statistics would go up massively if
| they were worldwide and getting those is harder (and less
| accurate) than in the US alone. Additionally, the
| regulatory framework for aviation isn't the same
| everywhere so it is a bit apples to oranges to compare
| outside the US although it is clear that the issues
| leading to the two MAX crashes were design and training
| in nature and directly point back at Boeing as a root
| cause.
| radiator wrote:
| People spend so much more time inside cars than inside
| airplanes every year, that such a comparison seems
| disingenuous. You should normalize the deaths by time
| travelled.
| stouset wrote:
| Literally any way you slice it, flying a major airline in
| the U.S. is safer than any other form of transportation,
| including walking.
| chrisbolt wrote:
| Though I agree flying is extremely safe, keep in mind that
| of those 4 years, two of them were while the 737 MAX was
| grounded, and much of it was while air travel was much
| lower due to COVID.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _safety is getting worse_
|
| Record passenger miles flown [1] with years of zero
| fatalities since, I believe, 2020 [2][3] refutes this
| hypothesis.
|
| [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RPM
|
| [2] https://www.airlines.org/dataset/safety-record-of-u-s-
| air-ca...
|
| [3] https://www.airlines.org/dataset/safety-record-of-u-s-
| air-ca...
| michaelsshaw wrote:
| If any other mode of transportation were nearly as dangerous
| as roadways in the US, it would be made illegal. The fact is
| that the 737 MAX has, by its own flaws, killed hundreds of
| people in recent memory. People don't want to deal with this
| clearly cursed line of airplanes at all.
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| I also think comparing air travel to car travel is a bit
| unfair -- it's better to compare air travel to Bus travel
| (the driver has a CDL) or Train travel (The engineer is
| specially trained)
|
| Car fatalities likely dwarf bus and train fatalities too.
| It's not that airplanes are particularly safe, it's that cars
| are particularly unsafe.
| stouset wrote:
| The MAX is far safer than driving at this point.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| When issues are repeatedly found for years the question is
| not whether a few planes with loose bolts are still safe in
| theory, but how many other issues weren't discovered yet that
| may be far worse. This isn't just a single mistake that could
| happen to anyone and it's clearly not limited to a single
| category of flaws - if they messed up with tightening bolts,
| messed up the software and also forgot tools in fuel tanks
| etc, in what areas can Boeing still be trusted?
| stouset wrote:
| > in what areas can Boeing still be trusted
|
| Look at the data. Over more than 22 years of flying in the
| U.S. we've seen _one_ fatality aboard a major carrier. That
| one, single fatality was caused by an entire engine rapidly
| disassembling itself mid-flight. The engine mostly--but
| sadly not entirely--contained this failure. That engine was
| not designed or built by Boeing, but by CFM.
|
| The next prior fatality aboard a major carrier was when an
| Airbus A300 crashed on takeoff in Nov 2001, killing on on
| board. The pilot overreacted on the controls, causing
| catastrophic failure of the vertical stabilizer.
|
| The last time we saw a fatality in the U.S. due to a design
| and/or engineering error of a Boeing plane was in _1996_
| when a 747 's center tank exploded due to a short circuit.
| Globally, Boeing and Airbus don't have meaningful
| differences in their track record of safety. Both have had
| experinced design and engineering flaws. Both have worked
| to fix those flaws.
|
| Should we accept the ongoing regulatory capture in the
| U.S.? Of course not. Should we continue to hold these
| companies accountable for improving their designs every
| time an incident like this happens? Of course, and we do.
| Sirizarry wrote:
| What isn't significant about Boeing consistently failing in the
| construction and quality of the 737 MAX? How does comparing it
| to driving to the airport prove anything? Scratch that, it
| proves nothing. What are you getting at?
| bostonsre wrote:
| Maybe that it would be interesting to know what the numbers
| actually are. There is the common saying that you are more
| likely to get in an accident on the way to the airport than
| traveling on the plane, but knowing what the likelihood of
| both of those as well as the likelihood of an accident on a
| max could show this all to be hysteria or actually well
| founded.
| j-bos wrote:
| Voting with wallets to counter negative trend in an
| industry made safe by regulations written in blood, seems
| more reasonable than hysterical.
| Sirizarry wrote:
| Take it like this: If you have to ride share and you hear
| that a common car used by drivers of Uber is having an
| increased failure rate, not passing inspections and have
| been temporarily banned from being on the road until more
| is learned; I think a pretty fair response is to try and
| avoid entering that car regardless of the ratio of
| incidents when driving that car, and when biking to the
| dealership to get it
| gruez wrote:
| >I think a pretty fair response is to try and avoid
| entering that car regardless of the ratio of incidents
| when driving that car, and when biking to the dealership
| to get it
|
| "avoid" is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here though.
| If doing so doesn't cost me anything, then avoiding that
| car is a non-brainer. However in real life nothing is
| really costless. Avoiding that car at the very least
| would cause you to wait longer. If that car is your daily
| driver, and you don't have a backup, then avoiding that
| car might cost you hundreds per month. That's why you
| need to factor in statistics and figure what the absolute
| risk is, and whether it's worth "avoiding".
| Sirizarry wrote:
| Right it would be a bigger problem if I owned and
| depended on this hypothetical car but my hypothetical
| self only needs it for Ubers. Maybe I'll switch to Lyft
| or local Taxi service. That might make me wait more but
| the point is that this isn't a hysterical response, much
| like monitoring and avoiding the 737 MAX until further
| notice isn't hysterical. It's simply sensible.
| zamadatix wrote:
| It's possible for quality of the 737 MAX to be significantly
| below the typical bar for aviation standards while still
| being significantly above the bar of things people should be
| personally concerned about. Demand aviation standards stay
| high if you value it, by all means, but don't become part of
| a hysteria around worrying if your plane is a 737 MAX purely
| on the basis it made the news instead of thinking about how
| unsafe it actually has been or is compared to your normal
| safety baseline.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| After the Lion Air and Ethiopia Arlines crashed, the FAA
| calculated that on average, the Max fleet would suffer a
| fatal incident once every 2 years and that was based on the
| existing number of craft.
|
| That's such an unbelievably ridiculous number to ignore.
| People saying this is insignificant are really putting
| their blinders on and I don't know why.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Again, that number is almost certainly an insignificant
| risk for an individual taking a random flight to worry
| about. That does not imply or relate to being an
| insignificant number airline safety regulators should not
| worry about or force improvement on. Air safety has been
| successfully held to a much higher standard than the vast
| majority of other safeties, and we should definitely try
| to maintain that, but that's unrelated to whether it's
| reasonable to be personally concerned about which plane
| model you take your flight on due to personal risk
| avoidance.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| You are almost certainly safer on a 737 MAX than in a car, but
| that's a low bar met easily by any modern commercial aircraft.
| Gare wrote:
| But "a car" is not really a fair comparison, it's usually "my
| car with me as a driver". Because I'd bet driving risk varies
| much more than flying.
| gruez wrote:
| See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38918665
|
| I didn't bother calculating the rate for driving to the
| airport, but eyeballing the figures for cars, it's probably as
| about as dangerous if you assume that the 737 Max were 10x more
| dangerous than average flying. Cars are still more dangerous
| than planes on a per-mile basis, but at the same time you're
| also traveling less miles on the car trip compared to the
| flight. Regardless if you hit a 5 minute traffic jam, you'd
| lose about the same amount of life as flying in a 737 Max
| (again, assuming it's 10x more dangerous than regular air
| travel).
| andygates wrote:
| I'm really not sure you can amortize deaths like that to
| individuals. Folks are dead or they're not.
| function_seven wrote:
| And the door either has a goat or a car. But before the
| event takes place (opening the door), it is perfectly
| reasonable to do risk analysis with odds and fractional
| goats.
|
| Chances of dying because you flew on a MAX are still
| insanely low. Maybe worse than if it was an A320, but the
| absolute numbers have so many zeros between the decimal
| point and the value that they're basically the same: 0.
| gruez wrote:
| Yes you can. People take minuscule amounts of risk
| everyday, by driving or even walking. While I agree there's
| a point where the risk isn't worth it even if the expected
| value is positive (eg. russian roulette to win a billion
| dollars), but we're nowhere near that point with 737 Max
| risk.
| deelowe wrote:
| Why would I care about per mile stats? What matters to me is
| the safety of the contraption and crew I'm putting my faith
| in each time I step foot into the machine. Airplanes
| shouldn't get a higher safety rating simply because the trips
| are 100x longer on average.
| gruez wrote:
| >Airplanes shouldn't get a higher safety rating simply
| because the trips are 100x longer on average.
|
| Note that you can take those stats and multiply by how many
| miles you're traveling to figure out your per-incident risk
| (ie. risk for the whole flight). Even if you do that you'll
| find they're quite safe, compared to other activities you
| do every day. Sure, the averages might not be applicable
| for edge cases (eg. very short flights), but for the
| average traveler it's a pretty good estimate.
| tadfisher wrote:
| You would care because, presumably, you're deciding on a
| mode of transport to travel those miles. Otherwise, the
| measure is deaths per trip, which would prompt the
| conclusion that cars are thousands of times safer than air
| travel.
| deelowe wrote:
| It doesn't work that way. When I fly, it's typically the
| only feasible option. I've never in my life sat down and
| calculated flying vs driving. It's more something like
| >400 miles, then fly, otherwise drive.
| soraminazuki wrote:
| Per mile is a ridiculous metric when comparing two totally
| different modes of transportation. Think about how many car
| trips a single flight represents.
| gruez wrote:
| I explicitly addressed this in my last comment:
|
| >Cars are still more dangerous than planes on a per-mile
| basis, but at the same time you're also traveling less
| miles on the car trip compared to the flight.
| ssijak wrote:
| statistic should be per hour spent in the transport, not per
| mile
| pokstad wrote:
| There's probably more people worried about the 737 than are
| worried about the imperfect autopilot in their cars.
| chrsig wrote:
| There are some of us that are just as worried about the 737
| as the imperfect autopilot in _others_ cars :)
| cjdell wrote:
| Voting with your wallet is a thing. It's the only feedback that
| matters to these people.
| teeray wrote:
| Fallacy of Relative Privation in this case. The correct
| question is: "Are you less safe on a 737 MAX than any other
| commercial aircraft?" The answer to this question for a
| properly functioning airline industry should always be "no."
| Given the recent incidents, the answer to this question is,
| unfortunately, "yes."
| parkererway wrote:
| Doesn't the answer to that question _have_ to be less for all
| but one airframe?
|
| Genuinely - trying to understand the point here.
| teeray wrote:
| Depends what you measure. To keep things grounded in
| reality we can use measures involving "things about planes
| that airline customers universally consider bad": the
| number of people killed by a model or the number of
| passenger items ejected from the plane during the flight.
| flkiwi wrote:
| I would hop on a MAX right now and be perfectly happy about it.
| That's not to say I don't hope we get some good lessons from
| this event, but this could end up being a contractor
| maintenance issue rather than a manufacturing flaw, for
| example. Given the MAX series is flying many, many routes per
| day without incident, I wouldn't make any decisions to, say,
| avoid a particular plane based on this incident.
| daedalus_j wrote:
| It's significant because it exposes that Boeing's assembly/QA
| process is not as bullet-proof as it was in the past. Assuming
| things work the way they should, this (combined with the other
| loose-bolts situation that recently happened) should trigger
| that process to be tightened up, much like the earlier crashes
| triggered a bunch of pilot training to make sure everyone was
| aware of the changes in the MAX. But it's not at all a sign
| that Boeing planes are at risk of falling out of the sky onto
| your house.
|
| You're still safer on the plane than you are in your car,
| statistically speaking.
|
| Something I find interesting is that this plane, with the door-
| sized hole in it, took the extra ~10 minutes required to run
| all the checklists to do a maximally safe landing before coming
| back in. The videos of the plane flying with a hole in it are
| interesting, there's a flight attendant standing talking to the
| people seated near the hole. If I understand correctly, this
| video seems to make the case that this event wouldn't actually
| have happened at cruising altitude, where the depressurization
| blast would've been worse, which is also interesting to know.
| https://youtu.be/WhfK9jlZK1o?si=g2QDFWSgEwkGvuiS
| mihaaly wrote:
| Most accidents occur to people close to or inside their home.
|
| They should stop worry about airplanes and traffic accidents
| altogether! :-)
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Are you less safe on a 737 MAX than driving to the airport in
| a car?
|
| I don't think that's a meaningful comparison. The 737 MAX
| problems are related to the airplane itself. The dangers of
| driving are mostly related to the performance of the drivers,
| not the cars themselves.
| jessriedel wrote:
| If you estimate the risk by just taking the number of fatal
| crashes and dividing by the number of miles traveled by all 737
| Max'es, it's roughly 10x safer per mile than car. (And almost
| certainly more dangerous than cars per trip rather than per
| mile.)
|
| > 1,300 aircraft have been built since the [737 Max] first
| started flying in 2017, with two deadly crashes. I don't know
| how many miles those have accumulated, but presumably it's of
| order 4k miles per day per aircraft, and maybe [1.5] years
| ([500] days) of flying to date per aircraft on average [in
| light of delivery dates and extensive groundings], giving a
| very rough estimate of a [~2] billion miles? So maybe a deadly
| crash per billion miles, in comparison to a bit over one deadly
| crash per 100M miles for cars.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38895004
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38895077
| bagels wrote:
| Cars are getting safer all the time. It's okay to drive the car
| where the airbag has been replaced with a spike.
| United857 wrote:
| For the most reliable info, you can look up your flight number in
| Flightaware or Flightradar 24 -- those use actual flight plan
| data, so will take into account any last minute aircraft changes.
| gruez wrote:
| >those use actual flight plan data, so will take into account
| any last minute aircraft changes.
|
| But at that point it's too late. I doubt people are that afraid
| of 737 Max that they'll cancel a flight (and forfeit their
| ticket) over it.
| m_a_g wrote:
| I would. I'm that afraid.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _doubt people are that afraid of 737 Max that they 'll
| cancel a flight (and forfeit their ticket) over it_
|
| Nobody rational will. But there are plenty of people with an
| understandable fear of flying who will create a customer-
| service kerfuffle over it. On the margin that might not do
| anything. But in aggregate it could affect how the airlines
| negotiate settlements from Boeing.
| eastbound wrote:
| No. It's just that people want to vote with their feet, and
| inflict damage to Boeing for abhorrent behavior.
|
| I mean not even every army general in every country has
| killed as many as Boeing.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _people want to vote with their feet, and inflict
| damage to Boeing for abhorrent behavior_
|
| People want to express outrage. That's understandable.
|
| Most flight revenue is from frequent travellers, and they
| understand the business enough to know histrionics won't
| change Boeing's incumbency. A couple people who fly twice
| a year swapping airlines isn't going to move the needle.
| And I doubt a material fraction of them are likely voters
| who would bother their electeds about this.
| _jal wrote:
| > their histrionics won't change Boeing's incumbency
|
| You seem to entirely miss the possibility that this has
| nothing to do with "punishing" anyone, and that people
| simply don't want to stress out about dying during their
| flight.
|
| You can call it irrational if you like, that feeling of
| superiority and a few bucks will get you a snack. The
| brain worm is there, I know I'll be thinking about it
| next time I book tickets.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _people simply don 't want to stress out about dying
| during their flight_
|
| Sure, and as I point out elsewhere, that's reasonable
| [1]. It's irrational because it doesn't actually change
| anything, about your situation or systematically.
|
| Not flying a 737 Max to feel better is reasonable. Doing
| it to be safer, or because it's going to punish Boeing or
| whatever, is not.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38929638
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Everybody agrees that FAA is not what it used to be, these
| days the Boeing engineers are basically self-certifying
| their planes.
|
| So what's irrational in not believing that 737 Max is safe?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _what 's irrational in not believing that 737 Max is
| safe?_
|
| The millions of miles they've flown without incident.
|
| The key difference this conversation demands is a design
| versus fabrication or maintenance error. MCAS was a
| design error. It called into question the entire 737 Max
| fleet. This looks like a fabrication or maintenance
| mistake. That calls into question all of the planes
| similarly fabricated or maintained--those have been
| grounded. It doesn't affect a 737 Max of a different
| type, that has been flown for years and been through
| routine inspections, including of the very bolts
| suspected to be the cause of this accident.
|
| Caveat: I strongly suspect more than the type 9 need to
| be looked at. But we do not have evidence that they are
| unsafe.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| interesting question.. how many miles have 737max flown
| without any incidents?
| stevehawk wrote:
| > Everybody agrees that FAA is not what it used to be,
| these days the Boeing engineers are basically self-
| certifying their planes.
|
| I think Boeing /engineers/ would argue that statement and
| instead tell you that Boeing /management/ is self
| certifying the planes.
| diggan wrote:
| > But at that point it's too late. I doubt people are that
| afraid of 737 Max that they'll cancel a flight (and forfeit
| their ticket) over it.
|
| Luckily the airlines I travel with only use Airbus, but if
| they were using 737 Max, I'd definitely book tickets that I
| can change at the last minute, and refuse to board if it
| turns out to be a 737 Max.
|
| Yes, that's probably illogical. And probably much of life is
| illogical. But I rather have to wait some hours for the next
| flight than take the risk to die because of Boeing.
| frakt0x90 wrote:
| Except according to the top comment,
|
| "A lot of people don't realize that the fuselage of this
| plane isn't even made by Boeing, it's made by Spirit
| AeroSystems which also makes components for Airbus. We
| don't really know who to blame here until the investigation
| concludes."
|
| So I guess you just shouldn't fly.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Except Airbus doesn't have planes falling apart in midair
| even if they are using the same supplier. This is clearly
| an issue during assembly regardless of the supplier of
| the parts.
| davely wrote:
| In 2010, an Airbus A380 engine exploded. The fact that it
| landed safely was a miracle. [1] In 2017, an Airbus A380
| lost an engine (literally, fell off the plane). [2] In
| 2018, a cockpit windshield blew out in an Airbus A319.
| [3]
|
| Don't get me wrong, the culture at Boeing has changed
| (for the worse). The 737 Max is not without issues. It's
| horrific that hundreds have died due to both ignorance
| and deception on behalf of Boeing.
|
| But Airbus isn't some sort of flawless golden goose
| either. Any time something like this happens, failure
| modes are identified and things will get safer.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_32
|
| [2] https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/news/the-
| latest/photos-airb...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sichuan_Airlines_Flight
| _8633
| V-eHGsd_ wrote:
| it's not flawless but, it _does_ have a better safety
| record.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Not trying to move the goalposts, but how old were these
| Airbus planes at the time of their incidents? Were they
| months old off the assembly line, or were they several
| years in where slips in maintenance and inspections came
| into play?
| nottorp wrote:
| But in all cases there was no subsequent news that
| inspection of all airbus planes proved most engines were
| bolted to the wing wrong... or that all the windshields
| were glued wrong.
|
| And this loose bolts thing shows up on a plane model
| where the "driving controls" were designed wrong.
|
| Note that no one is complaining about the other Boeing
| 737 models.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| I find the A380 accidents quite fascinating. If there is
| a plane I want to lose an engine on it's one with four on
| it for sure. :)
| ssijak wrote:
| A380 can loose only one engine and fly, same as smaller
| planes, they can loose an engine and land.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _A380 can loose only one engine and fly_
|
| Modern airliners can glide tens miles with complete loss
| of power. (It's why they have RATs [1].)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram_air_turbine
| dylan604 wrote:
| Technically, the Osprey can loose one engine and continue
| to fly too. They have linkage connecting each engine to
| the other rotor specifically for this.
| diggan wrote:
| The blame could be with a single individual, a group of
| people, the politics at Boeing or the engineering at
| AeroSystems.
|
| The point is that none of the Airbus planes had the same
| sort of in-flight extreme ventilation as the Boeing plane
| just had, nor are any entire series of airplanes from
| Airbus currently grounded because of lose bolts.
|
| As I said, it's not logical, it's not based on reason nor
| numbers. It's just a feeling.
| gruez wrote:
| >I'd definitely book tickets that I can change at the last
| minute, and refuse to board if it turns out to be a 737
| Max.
|
| Even with flexible tickets, most carriers don't allow you
| to cancel less than 24 hours prior to departure Also,
| airlines would most likely charge you the difference
| between the fare price, which for a last minute ticket is
| might be a significant price difference.
|
| >But I rather have to wait some hours for the next flight
| than take the risk to die because of Boeing.
|
| So you'd rather lose a few hours of your life waiting at an
| airport, than losing a few minutes of your life over the
| risk of dying from a 737 Max? Whatever floats your boat, I
| guess.
| diggan wrote:
| Yes, that's right, that's my current feeling which may or
| may not change in the future.
|
| Thanks for the summary!
|
| Edit, as you added more content to your comment rather
| than just a one-liner snark:
|
| > Even with flexible tickets, most carriers don't allow
| you to cancel less than 24 hours prior to departure
|
| I guess my typical airline isn't in your personal
| category of "most carriers" as they allow me to change
| any dates for my ticket up until I've boarded the first
| flight. YMMV obviously.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _you 'd rather lose a few hours of your life waiting at
| an airport, than losing a few minutes of your life over
| the risk of dying from a 737 Max_
|
| I've chosen a less-than-ideal itinerary for comfort (
| _e.g._ lay-flat seat or direct flight).
|
| Flying is stressful for a lot of people. As OP admits,
| it's irrational. But if it means you avoid spending the
| flight in a panic, it's not unreasonable to swap planes
| or even eat the ticket cost. (It might be a sign to talk
| to someone about anxiety.)
| arcticbull wrote:
| > Even with flexible tickets, most carriers don't allow
| you to cancel less than 24 hours prior to departure.
|
| They definitely do! It's usually until just before
| departure - but some flexible tickets you can just no-
| show and get a refund. In some cases, there may be some
| no-show penalty, but definitely not universally. I can't
| think of any US carriers that impose a 24 hour
| cancelation restriction. I'm sure there's some
| international ones.
|
| > Also, airlines would most likely charge you the
| difference between the fare price, which for a last
| minute ticket is might be a significant price difference.
|
| Usually within the US, you can do a same-day change or
| same-day standby for some nominal, fixed amount of money
| on any ticket (free with status) and swap to any flight
| within ~24 hours (specific restrictions vary).
|
| Here's American's policy on same-day changes [1]. Here's
| Delta's [2]. United's [3].
|
| > So you'd rather lose a few hours of your life waiting
| at an airport, than losing a few minutes of your life
| over the risk of dying from a 737 Max? Whatever floats
| your boat, I guess.
|
| On this we completely agree. I ran the numbers and your
| likelihood of dying on a 737 NG is 1/400 the risk of
| dying in a car on a per-mile basis. Based on the median
| distance from home to a US airport of 17 miles, you're
| more likely to die on the road to and from the airport
| than a 16,500mi flight on a 737. And infinitely more
| likely to get injured.
|
| [1] https://www.aa.com/i18n/plan-travel/extras/same-day-
| travel.j...
|
| [2] https://www.delta.com/us/en/change-cancel/same-day-
| flight-ch...
|
| [3] https://www.united.com/en/us/fly/travel/trip-
| planning/flight...
| dist-epoch wrote:
| The 737 is cursed. Not illogical to avoid it. There are
| plenty alternatives.
| theodric wrote:
| Point of order, because this is HN and I get to be
| pedantic here: the 737 Max is cursed; the 737 and 737NG
| are proven good by their long track record of reliability
| through thousands of units produced and in service
| jerf wrote:
| It may be illogical from a strictly individual point of
| view. But from a broader societal view we'd all be better
| off if we did it and it is pro-social and pro-civic to be
| willing to sacrifice a little of your personal convenience
| to make a point like this. Nothing but _nothing_ will get
| Boeing 's attention like what is essentially an end-
| customer strike.
|
| In general quite a lot of the chains wrapped around us that
| drive so many people to complain are really only kept there
| by raw personal selfish convenience. To be clear, I am
| absolutely not saying that they are not real as a result.
| They are perfectly real. But in many cases they are still
| really nothing more than personal convenience holding you.
| For instance, as I write this, almost all of the dangers of
| smart phones can be kept at bay just by refusing the
| conveniences. (Not quite all. But really quite a lot of
| them.)
|
| We'd all be better off if there were more of us willing to
| take this kind of stand, and by that standard, it is
| Vulcan-grade logical.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Boeing stock is down substantially. That will get their
| attention.
| jerf wrote:
| Also true! And if the mood strikes the media complex to
| kick a wounded gazelle for profit, which they are known
| to do, a site like this getting featured on the news may
| well feed back into their stock price too.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| And moreso than passenger complaints. Passengers don't
| buy airplanes.
|
| Boeing will listen to the airlines and the markets.
| is_true wrote:
| 10% doesn't seem much. I was expecting it to be worse
| Sakos wrote:
| The market (correctly) assumes that the FAA won't make
| any decisions that might endanger Boeing financially in
| any really significant way that might turn into an
| existential threat.
| dheera wrote:
| > willing to sacrifice a little of your personal
| convenience
|
| It's not convenience, it's that the ONLY reasonably
| priced flights are non-refundable ones, and not everyone
| can afford another flight ticket just to prove a point.
| Another idiotic thing that we need to change.
|
| Although I really do wish there were an "Airbus only"
| option when booking flight tickets. And as much as I
| don't normally like to stereotype things, when it comes
| to safety I feel I've consistently seen much better
| safety standards in EU than the USA. Safety seems more
| drilled into the European culture. I just somehow have
| this gut feeling that some random dude at Airbus crimping
| some wire probably actually did everything correctly and
| to specifications.
|
| Not to mention they have stricter work hour limits in
| Europe, so I don't have to worry about someone doing a
| shoddy job due to lack of sleep.
| jedmeyers wrote:
| Alaska temporary switched to the flexible travel policy
| because of this incident, so you should be able to change
| your ticket fairly easily.
| MRtecno98 wrote:
| It'd be all fine and dandy if you didn't hop in a car after
| getting off your Airbus
| andy_ppp wrote:
| And driving home is still more dangerous than getting on
| the flight.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Per mile traveled but not per trip.
| mrWiz wrote:
| I'm not sure how that applies here - the trip home from a
| travel destination will be a similar distance whether
| driven or flown.
| pc86 wrote:
| It doesn't, it's part of the mental gymnastics people are
| going to through to try to argue that commercial aviation
| is more dangerous than it is.
| weaksauce wrote:
| i'm not 100% sold on the automation that airbus provides.
| true that when all the sensors are working well it's fine
| and probably safer than boeing's methodology. however, when
| things go south there are something like 5 different layers
| of degraded "laws" of flight that have different levels of
| protection and can make what is an already cloudy situation
| even more stressful and dangerous. coupled with the blended
| control that each stick has can and has caused disasters
| before. with boeing the pilot flys the plane and there is
| less automation outside of the standard autopilot systems
| found on both methodologies.
| codegeek wrote:
| I am usually a very practical person but looking at the
| catastrophic failures specifically of 737 MAX and not one but
| many in short period, it is way too many for a plane. Yes
| planes crash but the probability is extremely low in general
| except for 737 MAX. Officially it is now on my no fly list. I
| will not board a plane if it is 737 MAX. And yes, I will
| suffer the consequences of that.
| uudecoded wrote:
| In Seattle (since Boeing was the largest employer in the
| state until Amazon succeeded them), there was a common line:
|
| "if it's not Boeing, I'm not going" (See '79 bumper sticker:
| https://www.ebay.com/itm/332131135342)
|
| Starting to look like it might be the other way around...
| rconti wrote:
| Move Boeing back to Seattle!
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I'm starting to get there though.
| jjav wrote:
| The planes only start transmitting when they are ready to go
| (not sure if they do it after pulling out of the gate or when
| doors close or thereabouts). So by the time you see the
| flight data you're most likely boarded already. So yes, too
| late.
| stevehawk wrote:
| The planes are all flying IFR flight plans which are
| submitted in advance and include airplane type. How far in
| advance is a little bit random but still in advance of
| leaving the gate.
| netsharc wrote:
| I don't think this is true, in any case you can
| extrapolate, e.g. if you're leaving from gate 34, see which
| flight of this airline is arriving at gate 34 just before,
| then you can check that flight's details, including plane
| model, on the tracking websites
| jjav wrote:
| My kid is a huge fan of flightradar so we spend way too
| much time watching it. I don't know the exact timing, but
| it is a consistent behavior that planes pop onto
| flightradar only a little bit before pulling out of the
| gate. But I'm not sure if there's a standardized point in
| the sequence when they turn it on or it's up to each
| pilot.
|
| But you're right, watching the incoming plane to that
| gate would be a good way to know earlier!
| dpflan wrote:
| I mean, isn't the info on your ticket? Which can be
| electronically updated when the airline makes a change, right?
| alkonaut wrote:
| Final aircraft assigned to the flight can be changed until
| the last minute. The info is most useful when booking.
| Presumably people might switch if the price/schedule is
| reasonably close while very few would turn away at the gate
| if they discover a max (I sure wouldn't and I belong to the
| tiny minority that even think about aircraft models ever). So
| the info is most useful when booking.
|
| Flying an airline that doesn't operate a specific model is
| the most (and almost only) reliable way to avoid one.
| diggan wrote:
| > Flying an airline that doesn't operate a specific model
| is the most (and almost only) reliable way to avoid one.
|
| Even that could make you end up on a 737 Max, if the
| airline you have your ticket via actually "outsourced"
| (simplified and not the right word) the actual flight to
| another airline, which happens sometimes.
| pb7 wrote:
| Multiply all these probabilities together and you have a
| better chance at winning a billion dollars in a lottery
| you didn't buy a ticket for.
| diggan wrote:
| Yes, if I was a perfectly reasonable and logical robot,
| I'd agree with you.
|
| But I'm a 30+ year old human, with plenty of experiences
| that "should never have happened" and "that was once in a
| million odds" that I won't risk it.
|
| I'd love it if I could turn off the lizard parts of my
| body, but I cannot. I try my best, but when it comes to
| life/death, I just trust my gut over anything else.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Anyone who would turn away from a MAX at the gate when
| they already bought the ticket, IF the relevant
| authorities (both US and elsewhere) say its safe enough,
| is probably not acting completely rationally but more on
| a gut feeling. That's fine. But it shouldn't be seen as
| some kind of demonstration of virtue or safe behavior
| (Especially if you get back in the car and out on the
| highway which is probably more likely to kill you)
| dpflan wrote:
| Sure, once you're in the plane and can look at the
| emergency pamphlet that provides the airplane model number,
| that's when you'll know...or just ask the crew? Either way,
| ticket info by the airline seems to be all you can work
| with until you're on the plane. If your concern is the
| potential type of plane, you'll need more statistical
| analysis of the route (and any public data about the
| airlines' fleet).
| dylan604 wrote:
| If they change the model of the aircraft at the last
| second, they should allow a seat change to no longer sit
| next to the door
| alkonaut wrote:
| You can board with some crutches and they probably shift
| you away from the emergency exit seat right away.
|
| They tend to be sold at a premium these days due to
| slightly more legroom.
| I-Robot wrote:
| It really shouldn't matter. There are MANY Max variants, and the
| airlines have already taken the 'questionable' units out of
| service.
| stephenr wrote:
| The ones that are known to be questionable so far, you mean?
|
| They never seem to identify the questionable ones until after
| something goes to shit.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Have they though? Boeing is the least trustworthy company on
| planet earth these days. The airlines aren't far behind. The
| regulators don't seem competent.
|
| I say this as a capitalist - Boeing should be torn apart and
| sold for scrap metal.I'm sure there are some decent folks
| there, but that place has turned into a mess.
| JohnFen wrote:
| The Max line is clearly cursed, and I think it's reasonable to
| be suspicious of all of the variants in it. That they've taken
| the newly discovered problematic ones out of service doesn't
| imply that the ones left in service are good -- particularly
| since it seems that the problems stem from systemic quality
| control issues rather than something special about those
| particular variants.
| malfist wrote:
| Really bad UI. Clicking on the placeholder text in the textbox
| doesn't do anything. I thought it was broken until I just
| starting clicking randomly and found that clicking outside the
| placeholder text works.
| IE6 wrote:
| I agree that clicking on what appears to be a placeholder but
| instead acts as a label should at the very least focus the
| input box so you're prompted to type in it. However the UI
| overall is pretty simple and clean.
| grgbrn wrote:
| Uhh.. damning praise. I think that can be rephrased as: "It's
| pretty, but despite being almost the simplest thing you can
| imagine, it still has ridiculous, unnecessary usability
| problems"
| grgbrn wrote:
| Same! At first I thought it might be a Firefox problem, but
| it's equally broken in Chrome.
|
| Predictably it's a React site, using some widget library (MUI)
| that is going out of it's way to provide a text input that is
| inferior to what's built in to any modern browser. Great!
| jmward01 wrote:
| Aviation is safe. An issue happened and appropriate steps have
| immediately happened and in the end an already incredibly safe
| industry will be even safer. If a car has an issue we don't blink
| and we loose nearly 40k people a year in the US alone, but a
| plane has an issue and we panic. Yes, panic. This is not rational
| or helpful and is a huge reason why aviation is so antiquated.
| You want flying cars? Stop panicking at statistically minor
| issues. Panic and fear are why it was easier to heavily modify
| the already massively modified 737 design to create the 'max'
| instead of just designing a new plane. It is nearly impossible to
| bring innovation to market because of panic and fear. Over
| reporting and sites like this are increasing fear and panic when
| we should instead be celebrating a system working as it should.
| malfist wrote:
| When you or I wreck, how many people are injured? How much
| control did we have over those situations?
|
| When a plane crashes, how many people are injured? How much
| control did the passengers have?
| I-Robot wrote:
| Ummm, mostly when 'you' wreck, it is definitely out of your
| control.
| jessriedel wrote:
| For the majority of drivers, the risk is primarily out of
| their control. This is because the majority of risk is due to
| a minority of drivers (the highly accident prone and the
| drunk, who are often 10x as risky or worse).
| I-Robot wrote:
| THIS EXACTLY!!
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| The goings on at Boeing this past decade or so suggest nothing
| is "working as it should". They killed hundreds of people
| trying to play silly games with safety regs. Hundreds of them.
| uh_uh wrote:
| I don't think it's worth celebrating an emergency door being
| blown off a plane that already killed 300+ people years prior.
| This is not how the system should work.
| mlsu wrote:
| Found the frequentist.
|
| The fact that defects (such as "the doors falling off") are
| being found in planes that have rolled off the assembly line
| MONTHS ago causes me to second guess my priors for anything
| that is coming out of a Boeing factory.
| gorkish wrote:
| /end of thread
|
| You can apply this same argument to literally fucking
| everything.
| djmips wrote:
| I disagree. Also language.
| DennisP wrote:
| Airbus seems to get by just fine.
| anonymousab wrote:
| > It is nearly impossible to bring innovation to market because
| of panic and fear.
|
| No, it's because of greed and managerial and executive rot.
| They could innovate as much as they want, nearly as fast as
| they want, and still be safe - as they and other airliners have
| done in the past! - but then they wouldn't save the "max"
| amount of money doing it. How dreadful.
|
| Boeing's failures are all Boeing's fault alone. They rightfully
| deserve the pillorying.
|
| > If a car has an issue we don't blink and we loose nearly 40k
| people a year in the US alone
|
| That is more of an argument for stricter requirements around
| automobiles and that entire industry than anything else.
| jmward01 wrote:
| The industry is littered with defunct companies that couldn't
| financially afford to spend ten+ years bringing a new design
| to market. It took nearly 14 years to bring the 787 to
| market, what company can afford a timeline like that? This is
| more the norm than the exception. Innovation is massively
| stifled in aviation.
|
| > That is more of an argument for stricter requirements
| around automobiles and that entire industry than anything
| else.
|
| I agree that cars should, and could, be safer. But my
| argument was about the reaction people have to accidents. In
| cars we have several orders of magnitude more deaths and we
| don't bat an eye at that but in aviation we have a scary
| incident and it is wall to wall coverage.
| StreetChief wrote:
| Boeing is obviously in decline. 2 maxs crashed in the last
| few years, now this, boeing recommended other airlines
| examine their max 9s and found several loose bolts[1]. So
| the airlines had to absorb the cost of inspection and
| maintenance due to poor boeing integration. Maybe, instead
| of paying boeing to fail, we just... let them fail? Or the
| government should privatize and fire the managers who are
| cutting safety costs for profit.
|
| [1]https://www.npr.org/2024/01/08/1223517098/door-plug-
| boeing-7...
| inglor_cz wrote:
| " Innovation is massively stifled in aviation."
|
| Flying is also a pretty mature technology by now. We've
| done it for more than 100 years and the physics is well
| understood. Massive leaps in capabilities are unlikely,
| much like no one will develop a pistol with a 2 mile range
| or a coffee machine that produces an espresso in a blink of
| an eye.
|
| What you can do is add more sensors and software, but the
| increasing complexity may not be worth it.
| jmward01 wrote:
| I would argue that aircraft are massively inefficient.
| Lets just look at the biggest cause, pilots. When flying
| the aircraft has to deal with cruse and takeoff and
| landing. Basically, the less you have to re-work the
| aircraft for takeoff/landing the more you can optimize it
| for cruse. Looking at just one thing, flaps, it becomes
| obvious how much aircraft could be improved by radical
| changes. When taking off, flaps are set much less
| aggressively than when landing. This is because most of
| the additional lift and subsequent reduction in stall
| speed, come with just a little flap extension. In landing
| however the flaps are extended considerably more. This is
| not for stall issues, but just so the pilots can see the
| runway. By increasing the flaps we are increasing the
| angle of attack of the aircraft and that allows the
| pilots to drop the nose, so they can see the numbers
| better. Land flaps are a huge change to the configuration
| of the aircraft and require a lot of structural changes
| to happen, just so pilots can see. Those changes cost
| cruse performance massively. There are many other things
| like this in air frame design, materials, etc. Just look
| at the experimental aircraft world compared to certified
| designs. The differences in performance are massive but
| they don't come to market because the industry is so
| stuck in its rut.
| jessriedel wrote:
| Strong agree with this, although worth noting that a crude
| back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the 737 Max has
| a rate of fatal accidents per mile that is only safer than
| driving a car by a factor of ~10. (See below.) Since cars are
| one of the most dangerous forms of transportation, it's
| certainly not _crazy_ that people would want to avoid an
| airplane model that 's only 10x safer than a car. Bicycles are
| only ~3x as safe as cars, and people reasonably use the danger
| of biking as a reason to not commute that way.
|
| (In comparison, air travel is usually safer than cars by a
| factor of 100 or more. It's hard to even estimate how safe it
| is because there are so few commercial airliner crashes.)
|
| There's also an inherent difficulty in trying to attach a risk
| to a single model of airplane, rather than broad activities
| like driving cars or bicycles, due to lack of data and data
| inhomogeneity. It seems reasonable to me to put some Bayesian
| probability on the 737 Max being significantly more dangerous
| than it naively appears (say, by another factor of 3 or 5) due
| to Poissonian noise and factors we can't observe.
|
| ---
|
| > 1,300 aircraft have been built since the [737 Max] first
| started flying in 2017, with two deadly crashes. I don't know
| how many miles those have accumulated, but presumably it's of
| order 4k miles per day per aircraft, and maybe [1.5] years
| ([500] days) of flying to date per aircraft on average [in
| light of delivery dates and extensive groundings], giving a
| very rough estimate of a [~2] billion miles? So maybe a deadly
| crash per billion miles, in comparison to a bit over one deadly
| crash per 100M miles for cars.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38895004
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38895077
| gruez wrote:
| > 1,300 aircraft have been built since the [737 Max] first
| started flying in 2017, with two deadly crashes
|
| How valid is this calculation for today? Presumably they
| fixed the issues with the two deadly crashes, so those
| arguably shouldn't be included in future forecasts.
| jessriedel wrote:
| If you think the problem with the 737 Max has been fixed,
| none of this is relevant. The crude estimate I gave is if
| you adopt the reasonable theory that the
| production/operation of the 737 Max is bad more generally,
| with the cause of the prior crashes being just one of the
| flaws discovered.
|
| An illustrative example: suppose there was a plane model
| with 100 flaws that each cause a crash every 100B miles,
| and after each crash that particular flaw is fixed
| completely. The "correct" fatality rate would still be
| ~once per billion miles even after several crashes, and
| would only approach the standard airplane background rate
| asymptotically after dozens of crashes.
| StreetChief wrote:
| Do these calculations assume all miles flown by ANY max
| variant are the same?
| jessriedel wrote:
| Sort of. It averages over them. If you want to dig up some
| data and make a more detailed estimate, please do so.
| StreetChief wrote:
| Nope I was hoping to point out what is to me a failure of
| logic, that since previous versions of the plane flew
| safely, newly manufactured max 8 and 9s somehow have
| trillions of miles of safe flight. Should we combine all
| ford mustang car miles driven since the 80s to calculate
| the safety of the newest version?! Obviously the analogy
| doesn't hold completely, but the versions of the 737 are
| different. If I put a jet engine on a ford mustang, is it
| still a ford mustang? It's the same car, but I mounted a
| bigger engine!
| jessriedel wrote:
| Oh mean, should we look at the 2021 model year Ford
| Mustang to estimate the risk of 2024 model? What about
| different 2024 cars that were manufactured in winter vs
| summer? I'd say yes, but you're welcome to do what you
| want.
| vikramkr wrote:
| Airlines aren't safe just because. Weakening FAA regulation,
| critical issues with flight controller shortages/exhaustion,
| culture changes at Boeing related to safety, etc all threaten
| to undo that safety record. The system is not working as it
| should and statistics don't magically maintain themselves at
| previous levels.
| baryphonic wrote:
| What's the evidence for weakening FAA regulation?
|
| EDIT: I'm getting downvoted, but I really am curious. It's
| extremely uncommon for government bureaucracy to roll back
| regulations, and as far as I can tell from some Googling, the
| FAA has not done so. So what regulations are being weakened?
| vikramkr wrote:
| Cozy relationships between the FAA and manufacturers,
| executive orders requiring them to 'collaborate' with
| manufacturers, evidence suggesting retaliation against
| whistleblowers, etc. there were significant investigations
| after the the MCAS tragedy. And they lost a lot of
| credibility as leaders in regulation when they waited to
| ground the max after the crashes while others took the
| lead.
|
| Edit: Replying to the edit - oh come on HN dont downvote
| their question it's a reasonable question, my original
| response didn't link any articles.
|
| The regulation doesn't specifically have to get rolled
| back. In this case a large part of weakening regulations is
| shifting to allowing the manufacturer (Boeing) to regulate
| themselves and allowing (or forcing) ties between regulator
| and manufacturer to get too close.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/us/politics/boeing-
| faa.ht...
| baryphonic wrote:
| Ah, so regulatory capture? I can see that.
|
| It also seems like the ATC system is stretched thin, as
| well as the airlines themselves in terms of pilots.
| Though I may be biased since I'm much more aware of ATC
| problems given the various YouTube channels I watch
| covering aviation.
| vikramkr wrote:
| Yep that was what I was referring to with shortages and
| exhaustion - not great with the recent revelations of the
| near misses. It's a warning that if the work to maintain
| those safety numbers isn't done we can't expect them to
| stay the same. Air travel is still safe, and has a lot of
| headroom before it's as bad as cars. But even that
| argument is kind of scary to see people making. Going
| from "even a single failure is unacceptable" to "even
| with 2 planes falling out of the sky it's still safer
| than driving" is a shift in mindset that threatens to
| invalidate that latter argument.
| nottorp wrote:
| > as far as I can tell from some Googling, the FAA has not
| done so
|
| That's because Google has become useless, not because the
| info isn't there.
|
| You should try and find some of the analysis articles close
| to the MCAS disaster that explain how it's not the FAA that
| certifies airplanes any more, but the manufacturer
| basically self certifies.
|
| [Yes, they're FAA employees but paid by Boeing. Do you also
| believe in Santa Claus?]
| OvbiousError wrote:
| How many cars had their door fall off? More general, how many
| of those 40k were caused by defects in the car?
| spaceywilly wrote:
| I don't want innovation that comes at the expense of human
| lives. The same thing is going on with self driving cars right
| now. It is wild to me that they aren't required to follow the
| same regulations as airliners.
|
| The safety record of commercial airliners should be help up as
| an example of how the system works. It's proof that we can set
| aside corporate greed and design systems that are safe if we
| want to. The way that Boeing has gone downhill and the FAA has
| allowed it to happen is shameful.
| jmward01 wrote:
| > I don't want innovation that comes at the expense of human
| lives. The same thing is going on with self driving cars
| right now. It is wild to me that they aren't required to
| follow the same regulations as airliners
|
| If self driving cars follow the airline model we won't see
| them for, at best, decades. That is decades of 40k deaths a
| year in the current human driven model. Self driving cars
| have the potential to drop that dramatically, but only if we
| actually develop them.
|
| Everything has a cost. Not changing has a cost. Changing has
| a cost. Weighing those two is important. If you only cite the
| costs of changing without considering the costs of not
| changing you will never change and always believe you are
| making the right choice.
| codegeek wrote:
| Why is 737 MAX having so many issues then ? In a short period
| of time since 2019, it had way too many incidents for an
| aircraft. I am never flying 737 MAX and yes I am a very
| practical person.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| 737 MAX now sends alarm bells blaring for me. The MCAS
| debacle has me questioning what other shortcuts Boeing will
| take.
| tlhunter wrote:
| > An issue happened
|
| IIRC three issues happened
| StreetChief wrote:
| Boeing manager I imagine?
| jmward01 wrote:
| Nope. I used to fly as a day job though. I have dreams of
| owning my own plane some day but it is so ridiculous to own
| one that that it is at best a dream. Also, I really do think
| Boeing is a source of issues in the aviation industry. This
| is all about ruts. Aviation is in a huge one right now and
| Boeing has a lot of the blame for creating that rut. Ruts are
| inevitable though for math reasons beyond this post so I
| don't fully blame them. I do have a prediction. The math of
| ruts says that the deeper the rut the more energy required to
| get out of it. This means that when aviation finally does
| break out it will be followed by massive innovation and
| change. I personally think that point is nearly here.
| Electric aviation is my bet on the source but it could be one
| of many other sources too. I can't wait to see it happen.
| StreetChief wrote:
| You seem to assume they will magically get out of their rut
| for some reason. If cutting costs is the rut boeing is in,
| what will cause them to get out of it? For a poorly
| functioning company, bankruptcy is the usual, but mcdonell
| douglas and boeing are strategic assets, so bankruptcy isnt
| allowed, and they can take our tax money and deliver death.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Safety comes in levels, and Boeing MAX 8-9, relatively to
| Airbus, is less safe than the standard we have come to expect
| in the 21st century.
|
| I don't doubt that this will be reflected in their future
| market shares, and _panic_ won 't be the underlying reason. No
| one wants to buy worse stuff for about the same price as better
| stuff.
| xyst wrote:
| > Aviation is safe. An issue happened and appropriate steps
| have immediately happened and in the end an already incredibly
| safe industry will be even safer.
|
| Nobody is questioning the safety of aviation in general. This
| is a focus around a company that has taken a nosedive in terms
| of quality of planes delivered for the sake of the mighty
| dollar.
|
| Insiders have confirmed numerous cost cutting measures from the
| C-level executives. To my awareness, nobody has gone to jail.
| Fines issued.
|
| > If a car has an issue we don't blink and we loose nearly 40k
| people a year in the US alone, but a plane has an issue and we
| panic
|
| Recalls are issued yearly across a wide number of manufacturers
| and models. I don't get your point here. This is not panic.
| This is poor design and/or quality making it's way into
| production with high probability of causing bodily harm to
| driver and/or others.
|
| > You want flying cars? Stop panicking at statistically minor
| issues. Panic and fear are why it was easier to heavily modify
| the already massively modified 737 design to create the 'max'
| instead of just designing a new plane. It is nearly impossible
| to bring innovation to market because of panic and fear. Over
| reporting and sites like this are increasing fear and panic
| when we should instead be celebrating a system working as it
| should.
|
| Yea let's just ignore decades of safety requirements because we
| wAnT tO iNnOvAtE. GoVeRnMeNt ReGuLaTiOn BaD.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| > If a car has an issue we don't blink and we loose nearly 40k
| people a year in the US alone, but a plane has an issue and we
| panic.
|
| We don't lose people to the cars themselves. We lose people to
| reckless driving and traffic: two problems that are
| fundamentally solved for aircraft.
|
| If the door of a 5-year-old car _fell off on the highway_ , and
| every car of that make and model were recalled for having loose
| factory-installed bolts, then people most certainly _would_
| panic.
| ameminator wrote:
| Aviation in general is very safe. However, there is clearly
| something wrong in Boeing's design and manufacturing process
| that's persisted for many years. I would not feel comfortable
| flying in any of the new 737 MAX's and will avoid flying in one
| as much as possible.
| j-a-a-p wrote:
| About statistics, another nice app based on the same ideas and
| fears is the Am I Going Down app. It lets you know how often
| you need to take the trip before you crash and die.
|
| [1] https://www.fearofflying.app/
| ycombinete wrote:
| Just bought that, thank you.
| codegeek wrote:
| Yes, Aviation is safe. However, specifically the 737 MAX model
| is not. Too many incidents since 2019 killing hundreds of
| people. No Thanks. I will rather go back home than fly a 737
| MAX.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Aviation is safe, the design and production of the 737 MAX is
| sloppier than most current aircrafts. Better compare to other
| aircrafts than to cars or bicycles. ;-)
| whycome wrote:
| > Stop panicking at statistically minor issues
|
| Um there are like 215 Max 9s and a door plug blowing out on one
| seems statistically significant.
|
| > we should instead be celebrating a system working as it
| should.
|
| Is the way Boeing facilitated the Max's approval "the system
| working as it should"?
| lamontcg wrote:
| Counterpoint: Boeing clearly has cultural issues around safety
| and as consumers this is the only way to financially push back
| on the company. If Alaska and United start feeling the pressure
| because people start to avoid flying on them entirely due to
| the MAX issues then that should be enough consumer leverage to
| affect Boeing and Boeing's behavior.
|
| I'm literally going to hop on a cross country Alaska MAX flight
| tomorrow (if the flight doesn't get cancelled) and I'm not much
| more worried about it than any other flight, but I'm tired of
| our country being run by MBA culture and having to make these
| kinds of risk-reward tradeoffs while considering that the
| management class of this country seems hell bent on turning us
| into a third world kleptocracy. We need to start punishing some
| of them for bad decisions. Otherwise they'll keep on gambling
| with our safety in favor of their profit margins and aviation
| may become a whole lot less safe.
|
| And in the process it might just improve the long-term outlook
| of their company. Boeing could decide to become an engineering-
| led culture again rather than a short-term-profits-led company
| which would be more sustainable.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| This comment misses the mark so badly it's actually hilarious.
|
| The main problem here is Boeings steady decline in QA.
|
| And no, panic and fear were not the drivers behind MAX
| inception. Greed was
| m3kw9 wrote:
| 737 is f-ed, stick with A350 haha
| ptmcc wrote:
| Those aren't even comparable planes that would fly the same
| routes
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Surely the A320 would be the primary Airbus equivalent?
| flerchin wrote:
| The very definition of FUD. I really wonder if these sites are
| thrown together by folks who are somehow profiting off of this.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Boeing have killed hundreds of people by skirting safety regs.
| With the MAX. Get a clue.
| flerchin wrote:
| This site went up in response to zero people dying.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| Zero people died because the site went up.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Airbus will profit because the site went up.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| A door came flying off at 16k feet. They found a bunch of
| planes with loose bolts. On a plane with a history of
| problems built by a company with a history of problems. No
| one died _this_ time. But hundreds died last time.
|
| Nothing will stop Boeing except money. People not wanting
| to fly this plane will change airlines purchasing
| decisions. Boeing will feel the pain.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > People not wanting to fly this plane will change
| airlines purchasing decisions.
|
| It actually may not, much, unfortunately; there's only
| one real competing line of products, and they're so
| massively backlogged that people will buy this anyway.
| flerchin wrote:
| What has you focusing on this aircraft over, eg, the
| Airbus A330, which has killed a similar number of people?
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| The event just happened.
| yoyoinbog wrote:
| This is how it is in life
|
| "One door closes, another one opens" Boing
| legitster wrote:
| Given that every affected 737 MAX has been grounded for
| inspection already, this seems a bit hyperbolic. If you are still
| worried about some hitherto unknown new problem from Boeing, it
| could just as likely come from any of their airframes.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| Airlines famously never make mistakes that happen to also sell
| more tickets.
| 4death4 wrote:
| You could have said the same thing after the first grounding of
| the 737 MAX.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > If you are still worried about some hitherto unknown new
| problem from Boeing, it could just as likely come from any of
| their airframes.
|
| Eh... not sure about that. The 737 Max is quite new, and this
| is catastrophic/near-catastrophic problem 2 in a couple of
| years. One could be forgiven for being more suspicious of this
| family than their others.
|
| Like, maybe these were the only two problems, and everything
| else is a perfect as could be, but at this point it's not
| ridiculous to be concerned that it's just a shoddy product.
| kube-system wrote:
| A lot of people don't realize that the fuselage of this plane
| isn't even made by Boeing, it's made by Spirit AeroSystems which
| also makes components for Airbus.
|
| We don't really know who to blame here until the investigation
| concludes.
| dralley wrote:
| True, but as integrator, Boeing is still responsible for
| ensuring the quality of the final product.
| btown wrote:
| And, importantly, it's entirely consistent to hold off on
| blaming any singular party until the investigation is
| complete, while simultaneously _not wanting to personally fly
| on a 737 Max!_
| jessriedel wrote:
| You can also argue that the airline is responsible for
| operating only quality products
| ghaff wrote:
| An airline is responsible more for safely operating the
| aircraft (including most maintenance). An airline really
| isn't in a position to verify every design detail of an
| aircraft any more than you're responsible for verifying
| there are no potential design flaws in your (much simpler)
| car that could potentially cause someone injury.
| jessriedel wrote:
| I think airlines are _a lot_ more responsible for
| verifying design flaws in their airplane than I am in my
| car. First, they are a giant business which has way more
| resources to do this. Second, they are selling a service.
|
| If I was running a US taxi service and bought a fleet of
| flawed Indian cars that caused crashes, I think I would
| be partially responsible.
| ghaff wrote:
| They're responsible for using street legal cars, yes. But
| I don't see any taxi company being responsible if they
| used GM cars that turned out to have a defective ignition
| switch back in the day for example.
|
| I assume airlines do some degree of due diligence and, I
| believe they choose the engine type if there are options
| available but you probably overestimate the ability of a
| business whose primary job is to ferry passengers from
| point A to point B to do a serious design verification of
| every tiny detail of an aircraft. And those details can
| be tiny; take the case of the Airbus engine disassembly
| mentioned elsewhere on this thread.
| mkipper wrote:
| This analogy isn't very convincing to me.
|
| Car manufacturing is a regulated industry. When I buy a
| car in the USA, even for my taxi business, I shouldn't
| need to hire a team of engineers to verify that it was
| properly designed and won't spontaneously combust. I
| should be able to assume that if the car is being legally
| sold to the public in the USA, the manufacturer has
| demonstrated that it meets some basic safety requirements
| set out by the government. I obviously have some
| _operational_ responsibilities (e.g. taking my taxis out
| of service if they're recalled for a design flaw), but I
| wouldn't consider myself responsible at all if my taxi
| happened to be the first 2025 Toyota Camry that
| spontaneously combusted from some design flaw.
|
| Regulators aren't perfect but this is one reason they
| exist. The FAA has a set of requirements for
| manufacturing and selling planes in the USA and they have
| a set of requirements for operating an airline. If I'm
| operating an airline and the FAA tells me that the
| verification of an airplane's design and its assembly is
| the manufacturer's responsibility and not mine, I don't
| think it's fair to hold me responsible if my brand new
| airplane falls from the sky because of a design flaw.
| kube-system wrote:
| > I wouldn't consider myself responsible at all if my
| taxi happened to be the first 2025 Toyota Camry that
| spontaneously combusted from some design flaw.
|
| Not that it is relevant to the overall relevance to the
| aviation argument here, but just in regards to cars in
| the US -- you often would be held liable for that,
| depending on which specific liability we are talking
| about, what the damages are, and in which jurisdiction
| you are operating in.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The US justice system has a notion of "joint and several
| liability", where we say "both parties are guilty and both
| are liable for the damages". I think that applies here:
|
| - It's the assembler's responsibility to make sure the exit
| door bolts are properly tightened, and
|
| - It's the manufacturer's responsibility to find assemblers
| that correctly tighten door bolts, and the manufacturer's
| responsibility to design doors that don't explode, and
|
| - It's the airline's responsibility to find manufacturers
| that design planes with not exploding doors, which are
| assembled by assemblers that correctly tighten door bolts,
| and checked by the airline's own maintenance teams during
| regular servicing of the planes.
|
| Everyone should be looking over and double-checking
| everyone else's work. But that's not how the 737 MAX was
| designed or built.
| diggan wrote:
| Did you comment on the wrong story?
|
| The submission doesn't seem to try to assign blame to either
| Boeing or Spirit AeroSystems, but tries to just give you a
| true/false depending on if they airplane you're going with is a
| 737 Max.
| kube-system wrote:
| It has obvious topical context.
| diggan wrote:
| Just because the website happens to be about 737 Max, does
| it mean absolutely everything related to Boeing is on-topic
| in this submission? Especially discussions related to who
| to blame for (the recent) mishaps?
| vikramkr wrote:
| Umm, yes? This website is obviously on the front page
| because of the recent mishaps so that's literally the
| most on topic possible topic to discuss lol
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| This is like someone trying to argue the reason they like
| looking at breasts and sucking on nipples has nothing to
| do with being breast-fed as a child, and they are
| completely separate things and the correlation between
| them is irrelevant to bring up.
| kube-system wrote:
| I am taking issue with the question implicitly begged by
| the submission.
| philipov wrote:
| Regardless of who is ultimately at fault, this is about
| people not wanting to fly on these planes. They don't care
| if it was Boeing or if it was a subcontractor, they just
| want the information they need to cancel their flight or
| demand a different plane from the airline.
| kube-system wrote:
| If it was a subcontractor, wouldn't they want to not fly
| on planes made by that subcontractor?
| philipov wrote:
| Those other planes aren't experiencing active safety
| disruption events at the moment, so no. We might not
| ultimately know whose fault it is, but we know which
| _planes_ are faulty. 737 MAX has a history of problems,
| and I 'm shocked they weren't shelved the first time.
| kube-system wrote:
| The planes listed on the website in this submission
| aren't experiencing any safety issues at the moment,
| either. The plug doors are only on MAX 9s, which are
| currently all grounded.
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| The MCAS crashes have been on MAX 8s, and those are not
| grounded. I have been avoiding all MAX models since that
| grounding back in 2019.
| kube-system wrote:
| Why are you avoiding them now?
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| Because I know I'd feel much more miserable during the
| flight compared to being on an A320. (Not that I'll feel
| comfortable then, I hate flying on single-aisle planes in
| general.)
| dingnuts wrote:
| is a 737 MAX even a sufficiently specific identifier? I
| thought this issue was specifically to do with the 737 MAX 8
| i_am_jl wrote:
| MAX 8 had the MCAS problems. The recent plug door issues
| are affecting MAX 9s.
| lolwutnaow29 wrote:
| Can't wait to see what the MAX 10 has to offer!
| i_am_jl wrote:
| Damn. Too late to edit this comment.
|
| The MAX 8 had the _crashes due to_ MCAS problems. The
| underlying MCAS issue affected all 737 MAX variants.
| bsmartt wrote:
| Sure, but the implied motive for spinning this up is that
| people care to know if their flight is on a 737max or
| <anything else>, and because Boeing put its name on this
| Russian roulette with wings, commenter is attempting to align
| perception with reality?
|
| Also, first flight number I could find is a 737max according
| to google but this thing says it isn't a 737max. AC565,
| January 9, 2024.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Boeing is the one delivering the product, right? Why would it
| be not boeings fault they don't qa the bolts on their parts? If
| a cars doors kept falling off Noone would accept ford saying
| sorry it's the factory we bought it froms fault
| kube-system wrote:
| We do in fact blame third parties for their components in
| regards to recalled components that are subbed out by final
| manufacturers. e.g. Takata airbags.
| jldugger wrote:
| I think the concern is less about who's to _blame_ as much as
| "this filter may not be as effective as you think at avoiding
| this specific disaster."
| kreeben wrote:
| I realized it months ago, years even and then I remembered an
| insight from decades ago.
|
| Boeing bad, mkay. Always has been.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Coincidentally, decades ago Spirit Aerosystems was still just
| the "Boeing Wichita division"
| adrr wrote:
| Who is response for the QA of components and workmanship? It
| looks like its was loose bolts from information released from
| United Airlines and there was a notice to check for loose bolts
| on the Max.
| steelbrain wrote:
| > and there was a notice to check for loose bolts on the Max.
|
| For a different part of the aircraft, yes. I don't think
| airlines check for every loose bolt ever when the bulletin
| says something specific.
| Matl wrote:
| We know that Boeing has a lot of Q&A problems with these planes
| and are taking all kinds of shortcuts. It seems the blame
| should be placed squarely on Boeing.
| kube-system wrote:
| We know they have in the past. Placing the blame on Boeing in
| this instance is conjecture. The investigation is not
| complete.
| simion314 wrote:
| From what I heard is that Boeing does the final assembly , they
| get that door out and put it back in, then at the end
| pressurize the interior to 1.5X the normal pressure and test
| the plane. Since this also was a new plane I do not see how
| Boeing can find a different scapegoat.
| j-a-a-p wrote:
| > it's made by Spirit AeroSystems which also makes components
| for Airbus
|
| So, how then is Boeing rewarded with this website and Airbus
| not if they are using the same supplier?
|
| Next step will be a plugin that filters these 737max from
| Kayak.
| Symbiote wrote:
| > Spirit AeroSystems which also makes components for Airbus
|
| True, but the main Spirit Aerosystems factories making Airbus
| components are in the UK, except for "central section panels"
| of the A350, which are made in the USA.
|
| The British factories used to be BAE and Bombardier factories,
| so it's very possible for there to be different working
| methods, culture etc.
|
| https://www.spiritaero.com/company/programs/
| kube-system wrote:
| Right, I'm not saying that anyone should avoid them. I'm
| suggesting that "guilty by association" is a silly way to
| filter the planes someone flies on.
| nolok wrote:
| 1 - it really doesn't matter, delegating your manufacturing to
| a subcontractor doesn't absolve you of ensuring the product is
| made properly
|
| 2 - it's made in a former Boeing plant, that boeing sold to an
| investment fund and then contract work to, so if your point is
| "that's not how REAL boeing manufacturing is done" well that's
| certainly where boeing is heading its manufacturing.
|
| 3 - The plane is designed, certified, assembled, inspected and
| then sold by Boeing. If I buy a ford and the door falls off
| randomly after two weeks, I don't care which subcontractor made
| the door, I give ford an angry warranty call.
| kube-system wrote:
| I understand all of that. My point is that people avoiding
| all 737 MAX variants over an issue specifically on plug doors
| that are no longer in the air, that we don't even know why
| they failed, are illogically filtering their flight options.
| nottorp wrote:
| > over an issue specifically on plug doors that are no
| longer in the air
|
| ... on the same type of plane that had the controls wrong
| enough to cause two crashes?
|
| People can see a pattern there...
| nolok wrote:
| Oh yes but that's a different type of MAX though ! No,
| not the one with the engine nacelle falling potential
| issue that we don't have a fix but want the FAA to
| ignore, the other one !
|
| Out of the 3 current MAX types, one killed people two
| times and the other two have unresolved issues (one that
| make it fail FAA certification, and the other that make
| it lose parts of fuselage in flight ...). And then Boeing
| ask for fast track certification on the 4th type, because
| they've been doing such a great job so far.
| nolok wrote:
| But virtually no one really is avoiding it over that,
| they're avoiding because of the multitude of various faults
| and issue over the entire MAX line that makes it highly
| unlikely that there isn't something else coming.
| kube-system wrote:
| This submission isn't on the front page because of
| incidents 4-5 years ago. It is on the front page because
| of the news this week.
| nolok wrote:
| I really don't understand what you're getting at. I don't
| disagree with you.
|
| The difference between this website existing for MAX and
| not for others is the repetition of issues though, to the
| point that now more people have had enough.
|
| When the glass spills, the last drop might be the trigger
| for the glass finally spilling but it's the accumulation
| of water that's the issue, not just that one final drop.
| kube-system wrote:
| The bottom line is that I think it is absolutely silly
| for people to try to make their own judgement about the
| safety of aircraft they get on based on news stories
| about different variants of models which have had issues
| that are already identified.
|
| This is a relevant topic for regulators to address, with
| specificity to the actual offending parts, procedures,
| and processes in place. Avoiding all MAX variants is a
| very hamfisted attempt to address a very tiny difference
| in observed safety.
|
| There are regional airlines flying much more sketchy
| things. Where's "isMyPlaneACessna208BeingFlownByANewPilot
| InPoorWeather.com"?
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| A singular incident where nobody died would also not be
| on the front page. It's the combination of this one and
| the MCAS crashes.
| kube-system wrote:
| > A singular incident where nobody died would also not be
| on the front page.
|
| Sure it would be. Commercial jetliner incidents are so
| rare that incidents with zero fatalities are routinely
| headline stories.
| FredPret wrote:
| This week's problem is merely the latest dot on a
| terrifying trend line.
|
| It's the line that's making the news, and this dot forms
| that line.
| consumer451 wrote:
| The 737 fuselage is shipped from Spirit to Boeing without an
| interior. The door plugs are removed by Boeing during the
| interior installation. It is up to Boeing to reinstall them
| properly.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38920716
| kube-system wrote:
| We don't know whether the reason they are failing is due to
| an installation issue or not.
| consumer451 wrote:
| We don't know for sure, but informed speculation indicates
| that this is likely the problem. See the replies to my link
| above.
|
| However, you are correct. Until the final NTSB report comes
| out, we don't know.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| This type of delay is of strategic value to the status
| quo.
|
| "We need to wait until all the facts are in,"
| "investigations take time," "We're still looking at root
| causes and it is premature to..." These statements may be
| factually true, but the time it takes allows people to be
| distracted by something else, passions to cool, and
| urgency to dissipate.
|
| It's no brainwave for Boeing or anyone else (e.g. the
| NTSB, on Boeing's behalf) to realize that the slower and
| more methodical the investigation, the lower the final
| penalty (of whatever kind) will probably be, at least for
| one-off incidents. When the track record gets long, the
| actual quality of the investigations may start weighing
| against them...eventually.
| kube-system wrote:
| Public opinion isn't a functional way to increase
| transportation safety anyway. All measurable increases in
| any form of transportation safety are due to regulatory
| reasons. The people who matter on this issue aren't going
| to forget.
| sorokod wrote:
| Spirit AeroSystems may have it's own subcontractors, they may
| have their own, etc... and buck needs to stop somewhere.
|
| The the airliner is called "Boeing 737 MAX" and not "Spirit
| AeroSystems - Boeing 737 MAX" which makes it pretty clear where
| overall accountability sits.
| kube-system wrote:
| Right, but this website isn't for regulators to assign
| accountability. This website is for people to choose what
| plane they fly on.
|
| Choosing to not to fly on a MAX 8 because a MAX 9 has a part
| that is failing, is jumping to conclusions. If someone wants
| to jump that far, maybe they should avoid the Airbus A220
| because it has wings made by Spirit AeroSystems. There's a
| lot of finger pointing going on when nobody knows why the
| doors are falling off yet.
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| The MAX 8 killed more than 300 people due to Boeing's
| culture. This incident is a fair indication that this
| culture hasn't changed.
| kube-system wrote:
| You don't know if this issue was due to a cultural
| problem at Boeing, because you don't know the reason the
| doors came off.
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| That's why I said it's an indication, and not an actual
| proof.
| sorokod wrote:
| I'll assume you are arguing in good faith so...
|
| People are angry, concerned and not willing to wait for
| NTSB to complete their investigations and see what if
| anything the FAA will do with the conclusions.
|
| People are applying a heuristic and for many the outcome
| (correct in my opinion) is that Boeing should not be
| trusted.
| ketchupdebugger wrote:
| If my brand new Honda's door fell off when I'm on the highway,
| I'm not blaming the door manufacturer I'm blaming Honda
| kube-system wrote:
| When Takata airbags failed across the industry, we blamed
| Takata, even if the manufacturers had to clean up the mess.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| > the fuselage of this plane isn't even made by Boeing, it's
| made by Spirit AeroSystems which also makes components for
| Airbus.
|
| Why would a company with the resources of Boeing choose to
| contract out such an important part of their planes, rather
| than vertically integrate that?
| t8sr wrote:
| According to their wikipedia page, at least, Spirit AeroSystems
| are a Boeing spinoff in any case, and something like 85% of
| their sales is only to Boeing. It seems like corporate budget
| maneuver, and a distinction I, a member of the flying public,
| don't really care about.
| wt__ wrote:
| Maybe this is the beginning of the end of the 'Max' naming
| convention...
| world2vec wrote:
| I said this before in another thread about the MAX a few months
| ago and got downvoted but I'll stand on this: I won't actually
| fly on any 737 MAX and actively avoid Boing airplanes altogether.
| I understand statistics but already hate flying and this whole
| debacle doesn't help.
| m_a_g wrote:
| People think I'm overreacting, but I don't care. I'm not stepping
| on a 737 Max in the next three years.
| codegeek wrote:
| You are not alone. I am literally going to ask the flight
| attendants before boarding if this is a 737 MAX. If they cant
| answer or the answer is yes, I will not step on that plane.
| supportengineer wrote:
| Look for "equipment type" when booking flights, and on your
| boarding pass
| maddynator wrote:
| Can someone tell what stack is used to build this website? I am
| new to FE and looking to understand how to create simple websites
| like this, where is the database, how are they connected/hosted,
| and how much it takes to run them monthly.
|
| Thanks in advance
| jacksoncheek wrote:
| This is a simple Next.js React app, deployed with Vercel. The
| component library is MUI.
| jtokoph wrote:
| What is your data source?
| 05bmckay wrote:
| https://airlabs.co/
| BizarreByte wrote:
| It's interesting to see how the DC-10 would have been treated in
| modern times with social media and mass (moreso) communication.
|
| I've flown on Maxes and will continue to do so, even with the
| problems they've faced a flight on one is still far safer than
| many I things I do every day.
| mihaaly wrote:
| ... I can only hope that Turkish Airlines Flght 981 might not
| have happened then. Unsure though.
|
| https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/a-legal-and-moral-questi...
| ho_schi wrote:
| How about checking that while booking? I'm flying usually with
| _Lufthansa_ and they inform during booking about the used type of
| aircraft. I've a strong preference for the _B747_ ;)
|
| Other prefer the _A380_ or ensure that it is a least a twin-aisle
| or whatever your preference is.
| jollyllama wrote:
| Even Spirit shows you your plane during booking.
| caycep wrote:
| So - question - how much initial capital/expertise would be
| needed to make a new ground-up competitor to McDD-oeing, but with
| the engineering/quality focus of the old Boeing? I'd imagine
| there must be enough disgruntled aerospace engineers to create a
| fresh company w/ a blank slate rethink of airliner design.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| It would be enormous. Getting airlines to buy from even medium-
| sized aerospace companies is a challenge. Bombardier couldn't
| sell its CSeries over fears that it would not be around for the
| multi-decade lifespan of the plane. Same plane under Airbus is
| a hot commodity.
| flashback2199 wrote:
| So enormous that musk won't touch it. He's said a plane
| company is something he wants to do but can't. And that
| wouldn't even be large airliners.
| dubcanada wrote:
| It would probably take less capital/expertise to make a space
| rocket at this point then a airplane. There is so much red tape
| that unless you buy an existing airplane company you're
| probably never going to get sales. US gov has proven it will
| protect Boeing with massive tariffs if anyone besides Airbus
| threatens it, means you cannot sell to US companies. So you'd
| have to start with EU probably, and there is a fair number of
| established players already.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| I was hoping this website would tell me how to identify a 737 Max
| from the inside or from my gate. Trust but verify.
| InvOfSmallC wrote:
| It doesn't find my European flight.
| supportengineer wrote:
| Am I the only one who cannot type into the text box? This is on
| Safari.
| uean wrote:
| It's not intuitive, but you need to click into the box to the
| right of the text.
| greatNespresso wrote:
| That's a great MVB
| ourmandave wrote:
| Is there a site to check if 737 MAX's are flying over my house?
|
| I don't need a door air dropped into my yard.
| gruez wrote:
| https://globe.adsbexchange.com/
|
| filter by type code
| tky wrote:
| Fun and all but the data isn't necessarily accurate, or it's only
| checking for MAX-9, as I looked up a MAX-8 that just landed and
| it said it wasn't (which is true, it wasn't MY flight, so
| gotcha?:))
|
| If this is an actual concern you have, look up the flight on your
| day of travel to see what equipment you will most likely have and
| react accordingly.
|
| As a fan of the TV documentary "Air Disasters" I'm more afraid of
| the software and the people than the hardware, and my confidence
| in air travel has only risen after watching dozens of episodes.
| apapapa wrote:
| Class action suit coming soon?
| ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
| The text-entry box doesn't work. You can click on it and it
| animates, but there's no cursor and typing does nothing.
|
| Desktop Safari, latest version.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| If you are outraged and want to be more than performative about
| it, check if your electeds are on the Senate Aviation Safety,
| Operations, and Innovation [1] and/or House Aviation
| Subcommittees [2]. If not, the broader Senate Commerce, Science
| and Transportation [3] and/or House Transportation &
| Infrastructure Committees [4].
|
| Call their office (D.C., preferably) or submit a comment noting
| the issue and your concerns about it. Be dispassoinate. Unless
| you _really_ know what the fuck you 're talking about, avoid
| suggesting solutions. (You want to avoid the crackpot bin.)
|
| This is a _really_ good week to do this, because budget
| negotiations are being finalised in both houses.
|
| [1] https://www.commerce.senate.gov/commerce-subcommittees
|
| [2]
| https://transportation.house.gov/subcommittees/subcommittee/...
|
| [3] https://www.commerce.senate.gov/members
|
| [4] https://transportation.house.gov/about/membership.htm
| pirate787 wrote:
| Also I'd contact your favorite airlines and demand that they
| retire their MAX planes.
|
| https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/airline-consumer-...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _I 'd contact your favorite airlines and demand that they
| retire their MAX planes_
|
| This isn't happening. Demand would swell well before price
| cuts made those planes uneconomical.
| cameldrv wrote:
| The 737MAX is not going away. There are about 1400 of them
| flying and another 6000 orders. Boeing obviously has some
| serious quality problems that need to get fixed, but since
| the grounding in 2019, the MAX has done something like 1.5
| million flights with no fatalities. This is worth fixing, but
| it's not dangerous enough to change your travel plans. You're
| way more likely to die from COVID you caught on the plane
| than because the plane was unsafe.
| justinclift wrote:
| > it's not dangerous enough to change your travel plans.
|
| They keep having new critical safety issues. :(
|
| That latest one only _didn 't_ end up with fatalities due
| to luck, it could just as easily have gone the other way.
| cameldrv wrote:
| Absolutely. There have been several airline explosive
| decompressions in the past 50 years. The fatal ones have
| each had one fatality, even with crazy damage to the
| plane (look up Aloha 243) If you figure this incident
| "should" have had one fatality, if you figure 100
| passengers per flight, that's a 1/150,000,000 chance of
| dying. Your odds of death are way worse on the drive to
| the airport than from this.
| justinclift wrote:
| k, now calculate the odds for "737 Max series planes" vs
| the rest, then make your choice. ;)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _calculate the odds for "737 Max series planes"_
|
| Those planes have also flown millions of miles without
| incident. This is a low-frequency statistics game; the
| signal is presently constrained to the type 9.
| barryrandall wrote:
| But cross-reference that with OpenSecrets to see if it's even
| worth pursuing. If they're in office, they're probably taking
| bribes from Boeing.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _cross-reference that with OpenSecrets to see if it 's even
| worth pursuing_
|
| I'm sympathetic to civic disengagement from nihilism, apathy,
| laziness or even ignorance. What I don't understand is
| proselytising it.
|
| > _in office, they 're probably taking bribes from Boeing_
|
| This is bunk, even if we forget that campaign donations
| aren't bribes.
| doetoe wrote:
| > This is bunk, even if we forget that campaign donations
| aren't bribes
|
| Are you sure? A quick search seems to indicate that Boeing
| certainly makes campaign donations
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _quick search seems to indicate that Boeing certainly
| makes campaign donations_
|
| Of course they do [1]. They're a defence contractor.
|
| What's bunk is believing someone receving $5k from Boeing
| is in their pocket. They're not. They've likely never
| spoken. This is all nonsense used to justify inactivity.
| Which is baffling, since it seems to require as much
| effort as (albeit less social interaction than)
| engagmeent.
|
| [1] https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/boeing-
| co/recipients?id=d00...
| lolwutnaow29 wrote:
| Hyper-rational man who read Freakonomics and LessWrong.com, 45,
| dies in plane crash.
|
| The man, only identified by his initials F.A., a regular user of
| the website Hacker News, was the single passenger on a flight on
| the infamous Boeing 737 Max airplane.
|
| As the plane rapidly lost altitude, he lectured the panicking
| crew on the safety statistics of the airline industry and how
| flying is technically safer than driving a car.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| This is destructive to air transportation. I understand the
| appeal of avoiding 737 MAX but realistically it's one of the
| safest model to fly on because of how much effort is put into
| further accident mitigation.
|
| Without even talking about how safe aviation is in general.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Where is the data sourced for this checker?
|
| I just tested two upcoming flights (UA2021 and UA2022), both of
| which are currently (as in, today) flown on 737-900. UA2021 shows
| as "Not a Max" and UA2022 shows as "Is a Max".
|
| Yes, I fully realize Unided will swap these around as needed.
| Just curious where one would even find the "scheduled" airframe?
| thegrim33 wrote:
| I'll preface this by saying I'm for sure not denying there's
| problems to be fixed with this plane. There for sure are. But
| man, people in threads like these seem so out of touch with
| reality. You know that you have an incomplete picture of reality
| right?
|
| You're on US-based websites and consume US-based media, both of
| which amplify every bad thing related to Boeing, but don't
| amplify the same types of issues for other manufacturers. When
| Airbus planes fall apart and crash and have problems those events
| almost never get upvoted to the top of Hacker News, and you don't
| see those events covered nearly as often in the media. All you
| are exposed to is Boeing bad news, and not bad news from other
| manufacturers and you have a pretty skewed perception of reality.
|
| It's still lottery ticket odds to be involved in a crash with one
| of these planes. You likely risk your life more every time you
| get in a car than getting in one of these planes.
| jacobgorm wrote:
| I'm in Europe, but I can't recall any Airbus planes falling
| apart in recent history. Could you provide an example?
| jjav wrote:
| > You likely risk your life more every time you get in a car
| than getting in one of these planes.
|
| This statistic always comes up, but there is a big picture
| missing in it.
|
| In a plane, you are a completely powerless passenger. There is
| absolutely nothing you can do to improve your odds, everything
| is in the hands of multiple third parties.
|
| If you go drive your own car, there is a huge amount of
| influence you can do to improve your odds. Maintain the car
| well, it's yours so you can. Make the decision to only drive if
| you are alert (not sleepy, not drunk, not under emotional
| stress), it's a decision you control. Become a better driver
| through training (car control, accident avoidance - these
| trainings exist even if they are unfortunately not required),
| another aspect which is under your control.
|
| Humans work best when they have a fighting chance. With driving
| there is a lot you can proactively do, in a plane there is
| exactly nothing you can do.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| Sadly this was a totally foreseeable outcome. How else could this
| go in a country where regulation is communism and shareholder
| value is God.
| avgDev wrote:
| Late to the party but I'm flying a 737-900 next week. I was
| concerned, so I looked up if its the "plane", turns out, it is
| not.
|
| Boeing naming is so confusing.
|
| 737 naming:
|
| [1] The first generation "Original" series: the 737-100 and -200,
| also the military T-43 and CT-43, launched February 1965.
|
| [2] The second generation "Classic" series: 737-300, -400 and
| -500, launched in 1979.
|
| [3] The third generation "Next Generation" series: 737-600, -700,
| -800 and -900, also the military C-40 and P-8, launched late
| 1993.
|
| [4] The fourth generation 737 MAX series: 737-7, -8, -9 and -10,
| launched August 2011.
|
| I read a funny quote from a pilot today, "737, flying yesterday's
| plane tomorrow".
| leetrout wrote:
| Even more confusing when flight crew phraseology is "this
| boeing three seven dash eight is equipped with ..." for a
| 737-800.
| stevehawk wrote:
| And the 737NG has its own problems -
| https://simpleflying.com/boeing-737-ng-nacelle-redesign/
| coxley wrote:
| Subject aside, this is a very pleasant website design. Love the
| simplicity and subtle animations/transitions.
| Fischgericht wrote:
| I find it puzzling that airlines are still ordering this plane.
|
| It's not just us, the customers, who should "vote with their
| feet", but the airlines, too. I would not buy from a vendor that
| is not able to have a QA process that makes sure all screws and
| bolts are in place, fastened and secured. Even if it would not be
| an airplane where this is critical for safety, even if it would
| just be a toaster, I would stop buying.
|
| I would find it insulting as a customer to buy something for 50
| Million USD to find out that the vendor was not willing to invest
| a little bit in QA. I understand that the 737 MAX is very cheap,
| but the damage to an airlines reputation, even if 90% of the
| customers do not care, should be priced in, which in the end
| makes it an expensive airplane.
|
| Looking at the number of quality and design issue problems Boeing
| had during the last couple of years, combined with the press
| attention they are getting now, I think we can take it for
| granted that during the next couple of months more such issues
| will be found, including the "oops, that potentially could have
| crashed the airplane" category.
|
| Also, I find it really insane that after all these issues the FAA
| still has not been reformed, properly staffed and funded. It
| really really should be clear by now that the system of Boeing
| doing the "certification" the FAA is supposed to be in charge of
| themselves.
|
| And finally: It goes beyond my comprehension that someone would
| decide to build a version of the voice recorder specifically for
| the US that only stores 2 hours of voice, while the international
| version of the same plane stores 25. What kind of cost reduction
| per unit is that, $1 per airplane? Having two different models to
| "certify", produce and warehouse just to save a dollar or
| something per unit does not sound like any sane business
| decision.
|
| Some people say that Boeing is that terrible because they cut
| corners to save costs everywhere. But to me it sounds like they
| even are bad at executing cost cutting...
| dawnerd wrote:
| What choice do they have? If they switch to Airbus they're
| going to be waiting until at least 2030. They could buy used
| but that's goes against why airlines are ordering new planes to
| begin with. And that's not factoring in the maintenance cost in
| switching manufacturers. Thats why you'll see airlines be a
| Boeing or Airbus only fleet.
| datadeft wrote:
| Do you think it is better to buy a plane that potentially
| going to be grounded than wait?
| pknomad wrote:
| I'm not saying I support how the 737 MAX program was
| executed but at least you have a plane that is potentially
| flying versus not having one at all.
| pc86 wrote:
| Yes, because you get revenue from a plane that is
| "potentially" going to be grounded, and you don't get
| anything from sitting around.
| crazytony wrote:
| and the manufacturer can be held liable for lost revenue
| so even if the AC is grounded, you can get some $$$
| crazytony wrote:
| The counter point to operating one type is on display here:
| if the regulator grounds the type, your whole airline is
| stuck.
|
| The only thing that eliminates/highlights issues is time. The
| 320 and 220 are faced with major engine issues and groundings
| due to _looks at notes_ not QAing the metal powder used in
| the sintering process for over 8 years.
| immibis wrote:
| Remember that airlines are forced to make good financial
| decisions, or they'll go bankrupt. That means buying from the
| vendor all their pilots are trained on, and it means buying
| from the cheapest vendor, and it means buying from the vendor
| with the shortest lead time. They might not have much choice.
| Aloha wrote:
| Buying something else means a pilot/fleet mismatch, and higher
| retraining costs
| weaksauce wrote:
| > And finally: It goes beyond my comprehension that someone
| would decide to build a version of the voice recorder
| specifically for the US that only stores 2 hours of voice,
| while the international version of the same plane stores 25.
| What kind of cost reduction per unit is that, $1 per airplane?
| Having two different models to "certify", produce and warehouse
| just to save a dollar or something per unit does not sound like
| any sane business decision.
|
| pilots unions strongly fight against this for privacy reasons
| is why.
| crazytony wrote:
| yes. It wasn't about cost at all. It's the same reason there
| are no cameras on the flight deck.
| ytdytvhxgydvhh wrote:
| It's like people buying Teslas. Sure, it's a company run by a
| mercurial edgelord billionaire who doesn't believe in quality
| assurance or decent post-sale service, but hey, it's a well-
| priced (depending on your jurisdiction maybe) car built by a
| company focused on electric cars and chargers. Not like you
| have a ton of options.
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| There's a 200,000x greater chance you die in a car crash.
| Personally, I couldn't be less worried about aircraft safety,
| even if this rate continues. If I could get a discount to take a
| 737 MAX exclusively, I'd do it.
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| "When one door closes, another door opens" -- Boeing
| datadeft wrote:
| God bless the author.
| apayan wrote:
| If you use Google Flights[1] to plan your flight, it lists the
| airplane that will be used for each leg of your trip so you can
| make sure to avoid flights on 737 MAXs.
|
| [1] https://www.google.com/travel/flights
| banku_brougham wrote:
| I think the market is beginning to explore the in-situ tolerance
| of consumers for fatal crashes, and weighing those marginal
| losses against realised cost savings.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the market is beginning to explore the in-situ tolerance of
| consumers for fatal crashes, and weighing those marginal losses
| against realised cost savings_
|
| Which market? Airlines aren't noticing this beyond a surge in
| customer-service and lost-booking costs. The financial markets
| are weighing penalties and settlements for the cost of grounded
| aircraft. The enforcement and incentive modifications around
| this will come almost entirely from the public sector and
| litigation, not consumers.
| epolanski wrote:
| Are results correct for Ryanair planes?
|
| Because 737 8200 are Maxes too but the result is a no.
| hentrep wrote:
| I booked a flight on United yesterday, well after this latest
| Boeing incident. After looking more carefully, they have me on a
| 737 MAX 9. I haven't kept up with the latest, but I thought all
| of these planes were grounded. Am I missing something, or am I
| just setting myself up for a canceled flight next week?
| Sakos wrote:
| Only planes with the type of door that failed on the Alaskan
| airlines flight are grounded.
| frumper wrote:
| I've seen reports that the airlines are hopeful they'll be back
| in service by early next week. At the very least they need to
| go through enhanced inspections, and those inspections don't
| seem finalized on how to perform them yet. The best answer is,
| no one knows.
| epolanski wrote:
| 500 comments in 3 hours, and yet it's getting quickly downvoted
| out of the front page.
|
| Quite a suspicious thread.
| voisin wrote:
| So if it is, can you cancel and get a refund?
| j-b wrote:
| My family is set to fly with Alaska Airlines in a Boeing 737-9
| MAX (ETOPS) this April. I'm just wondering about options and what
| others would do in this scenario. Maybe switch to a Delta flight
| on an Airbus A220-300, even though it means losing out on non-
| refundable discounts? Also, does anyone know if Alaska Airlines
| might let us change our non-refundable tickets (for an April
| flight) if we're worried about safety?
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