[ecmascript]

Wow, such a long article in what probably could be condensed into 1 a4 sized page if you really are just about answering the question posed.

Who actually reads articles like this? I am genuinely curious. Comes off as information overload to me and it's hard to know what to believe.

[matthewtoast]

I do. William Langewiesche is probably the best writer on aviation - if you want really deep and detailed analysis.

[qaq]

That reads as extremely biased analysis (to put it lightly).

[cmurf]

I don't consider it analysis. It is a discussion. He writes that Air France 447 was "an exercise in poor airmanship", full stop. That is completely inconsistent with the final report on AF 447, where literally everyone but the passengers got part of the blame for it. It blamed Air France, it blamed Airbus, it blamed the simulators, it blamed the pilots.

His central thesis in this article might be:

Boeing became the world’s pre-eminent commercial airplane manufacturer in part because it developed a coherent design philosophy that relied on pilots’ airmanship as the last line of defense.

And that's come up before in various discussions like Langewiesche's. And here I'll underscore this article is a discussion, it's not an analysis. He does bring in myriad relevant factors like airline's being cheap, foolhardy, downright wreckless at times, literally expecting pilots to paper over their decisions. I think that is a real problem all airlines have to contend with, but the safest airlines have mostly solved it, and the least safe airlines still struggle with it and it's mostly about systemic corruption, not pilot incompetency. It's just that if you don't have particularly skilled and experienced pilots all of the time, you're playing roulette - you don't have your last line of defense all of the time. Eventually, things aren't going to work out well. And on that part of the discussion, I agree with him.

[ecmascript]

Cool, you must honestly be one of a few. I could never bear myself to read such a long article even if the topic was of interest.

I can listen to or view content that are hours long but in text format it's kind of overwhelming to me. Mainly because I cannot do anything else than read while I am reading which makes reading such a piece a very time-consuming task. I'd rather do something else than read such an article but it's probably for the best that there are people like you who like it as well.

[lenocinor]

I understand your point, but I read articles like this (and especially ones by Langewiesche) because there are topics that, for me, I learn better about it this way. I'm exactly opposite of you -- I generally can't bear to watch videos or listen to podcasts about these kinds of nonfiction topics because they feel way too long to me, whereas I can read an article faster and skip the parts easily that I don't feel are good.