Recent failures by Boeing aside, the amount of thought that goes into the holistic safety of commercial aircraft is astounding. It kind of blows my mind how hardened a typical passenger cabin is to fire, not to mention other hazards.
What the news about Boeing has done is make me pay more attention to commercial aviation in general. The number of aviation incidents is actually pretty crazy, and no, Boeing is not at the center of them despite what the media would have you believe. What is amazing though is the actual injury and fatality rate is really low due to well trained crews and measured responses by air controllers.
In commercial aviation specifically, we worship health and safety even more than usual, in large part due to the high psychological impact of aircraft incidents. Given the complexity of aviation systems and the number of catastrophic failure modes that exist, the fatality rate of (particularly Western) aviation is absolutely incredible.
It's interesting that you mention planes. Boeing and Airbus (with FAA's help I guess) have figured out a way to build astonishingly safe planes. Yes, their systems are simpler and get a lot more use, but the fact that there has been exactly one hull loss for a 777 with no fatalities in 20 years with 1000 planes might also be telling us something about them getting the organization right.
It's hard to imagine how safe US passenger airlines have become. From the start of 2002 to now, there have been only 115 airliner fatalities in the US. That's 8.7 deaths per year. That's one death per 68,965,517,241 airline passenger miles flown.
It's an incredible human achievement.
I make a hobby of reading through NTSB avaition an maritime accident reports. It's a fascinating look at how to create almost failure free systems out of mechanical things that break and humans that do stupid things.
The interesting thing about statistics is it implies future behaviour based on past behaviour. Up til now commercial aviation has been remarkably safe, per passenger mile traveled. But it appears that Boeing has been shaving off safety procedures to get 737's out of the factory faster. And their suppliers have been similarly pressured, by all accounts. And the carriers don't come to this issue with clean hands, either.
So yes, up til now, commercial aviation has some good numbers. But we're also seeing door plugs fly off, tail assembly bolts improperly fastened, wheels falling off planes as they taxi around the runway, single points of failure on flight control software that cause aircraft to nose into the ground. These are the type of failures you wouldn't see 20 years ago (except for the MD-80, which was designed and manufactured by the same guys who took over Boeing in the 2000s.)
I'm not sure I want to wait to be a statistic. I'm happy to take the train.
It also should be considered that accidents depend on chance. It is completely fine to point out that aviation has gained an enormous standard of safety, which is the result of around of a hundred years of constant vigilance and self improvement of the industry.
Nevertheless a commercial airliner, recently produced, lost a door mid flight. Under less fortunate circumstances that could have been a major disaster and the statistic would look very different.
I think the worry people have is that safety standards are slipping, when it comes to building airplanes, specifically Boeing building airplanes. This is not something that would be noticeable in an accident statistic while it is actually happening, yet it is an extremely serious matter for the safety of aviation in the future.
Commercial aircraft are much safer than they ever were. In the 60s-80s there were typically just over 2000 fatalities per year. In the last decade typically under 1000 fatalities per year, despite the increase in passenger miles since the '80s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_accidents_and_inciden...
Besides, it's the regulatory environment and the reputation of the airline that provides most of the actual safety. Aircraft failures are in fact very rare. Even the 737 MAX is a profoundly safe aircraft compared to almost any car brand in terms of passenger miles, and usually by passenger minutes too.
This is every commercial plane, though. We've traded more frequent crashes due to human error for fewer, more spectacular crashes due to how complex planes have become.
Were there a lot more undetected airline fires in the 70s and 80s due to this? I haven't heard of that before so it's interesting to hear about it the sense of safety and not health.
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.
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.
I'm making the point that for for US flying (with US levels of maintenance / pilot training etc) boeing and even the 737MAX has a safety record that is incredible.
Not only that, it beats almost all other regulated modes of transit and even other regulated hazards (OSHA controlled worksites etc).
As always, it could be better - but it's actually amazingly good already - these planes are incredible safe in a challenging environment (miles, landing cycles, tolerances etc).
The demand for prison time here, when we have so many many areas where prison time can be MUCH more closely and immediately linked to bad actions (and goes unpunished) is misguided.
I’m sorry to inform you that just because of plane crashes doesn’t actually change the value of the company at all. First off the plane was purchased by someone else already, so they lose the plane. Second Boeings orders are placed in advance. You have to put up half the money before they even start to build the plane nobody’s gonna back out. There were hundreds of crashes in the 1970s today. We average about one every three years. The Boeing 777 is the safest airplane of all time. Followed by the 767 followed by the 757. Member airbus just crashed, although wasn’t their fault but things happen. If anything, it shows how strong the aircraft is, that a door can blow off on the thing stay together. Do you remember the Hawaiian airlines flight?
you’re spot on with how safe commercial air travel is today. it’s actually insane when you think about it.
but the reason its so safe is because there are so many redundancies built into so many different layers of the system.
once rot starts to happen, it’ll take the better part of several years or a decade for a wave of elevated fatalities to manifest themselves in these stats.
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