The Boeing Max 8 entered service in May 2017. Assuming a linear deployment rate, the 350 planes in service have seen an average life of 10 months. Assume 4 flights/day, that's 420,000 flights so far. 2 have gone down. A best estimate of the likelihood that a plane goes down (MLE), p = X/n = 2/420,000 = 1/210,000 ~ Binomial(n=420,000, p=P(crash)). According to the Economist [1] the likelihood your plane goes down generally is 1/5,000,000. So based on the fact that the plane crashes had similar characteristics, the Boeing Max 8 is 25X more dangerous than a regular plane.
25X is the difference between surviving a commute on a bicycle vs a car [2].
EDIT: The Economist source that estimates a plane's p(crash) is questionable, for a passenger plane. If anyone wants to dig into this further, I found this source too: http://www.baaa-acro.com/crash-archives
It was almost 1 a year for the first 5 years, but that is still less than 25% of the current Max-8 rate.
Edit: Max-8 had first flight in 2016 is in service since early 2017, so the crash rate over that period is roughly identical with the rate for the first 5 years of the A320. We just have a set of two closer together recently. Not enough data to form a statistical basis of course.
The current "industry standard" is 1 accident per 10 million flights. I think the MAX 8 has racked up something around 150K flights with 2 accidents. So yes, the statistics represent an anomaly.
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.
Very high. The incident suggests that there will be many more incidents in the years to come with different parts of the plane. It's a quality control thing.
It's not like every other MAX fell out of the sky. There were two accidents out of 42000 flights. 2/42000 is a decent risk to take if your job depends on it and absolutely terrible for normal everyday flying
Most Boeing jets that you can book a flight on today are some of the safest the world has ever seen. For example, the 777 has been in service 25 years with only a few serious accidents we can conclusively say are related to the aircraft design or operation. The 737-NG (precursor to the MAX and also in service ~25 years) experiences one hull loss incident for every 4 million or so departures. Even their other fairly new jet, the 787, has never experienced a hull loss or fatality in almost 8 years of commercial service.
If you apply this reasoning to the MAX statistics, then you have to apply it to the statistics of all the other planes, too, which also received various changes and updates during their service lives improving their safety and you are back to square one, that is MAX is much less safe than other planes
Someone did the stats around the max 8. 300 lives lost in 3 years of operation and 400 planes in the sky. It is actually quite dangerous to fly and much more dangerous than driving when you compare by travel time and not distance. In comparison, A320 Neo and 787 have no hull losses and there's more of those planes in the sky than the maxes. 787s have been flying for almost 10 years.
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.
One year ago I did a back of the enveloppe calculation and found that the Boeing 737 Max was two orders of magnitude less safe than other modern airliners. A320 and 737NG have fatal crashes to the tune of one per 10 million flights, while the 737 Max was crashing at about one per hundred thousand flights.
Flying nowadays is indeed amazingly safe. Boeing really dropped the ball on that one.
Almost all planes have more crashes in their early years, and many had worse or equally bad early records. It's too early to claim the 737-MAX will be inherently less safe than other planes using a multi-decade long measure.
Your math seems a little off there, or maybe just a typo--I get slightly under 1 in 10,000--but you are correct that the 737 Max crash rate (~1 in 250000) is much worse than other contemporary airliners. In fact the only modern airliner with a worse crash rate was the Concorde.
I'm not trying to defend the 737 Max or Boeing, I'm just trying to point out that even a plane which is dramatically worse than any other active airliner is still, in absolute terms, very very safe. Our safety standards are incredibly high and we are absolutely justified in enforcing those standards, but people shouldn't be scared to fly on the 737 Max when it comes back into service.
A plane that has a perfect track record now may not be perfect from now on.
Meanwhile, a plane with a bad track record right now may never have another incident from now on.
So, the 737 MAX may have 2 crashes now... but every other major plane might have that many crashes (or more) over the next 30-40 years. This would make the 737 Max "One of the safest planes" generally speaking.
Please don’t read this as a defense of Boeing, especially the MAX series aircraft, but from a flyer-safety standpoint the statistics show most Boeing aircraft in operation today are extremely safe.
The post-200 series 737s, not including the MAX, have some of the largest accumulated flight miles and lowest incident rates of any aircraft ever. The 777 and 747-400 also have exceptional safety records. Even the aging 757 and 767 fleets have only slightly higher rates. The 787, though relatively newer and with plenty of documented early issues has had no passenger fatalities that I’m aware of.
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