[tigershark]

Here on hn, on the other hand, there are plenty of people that say that they don’t see any problem in flying on the max once it is again in service. From my point of view I’ll happily let them be the guinea pigs while I’ll avoid at all costs to fly on that death machine.

[phire]

As long as they give pilots proper training, I'd actually rather fly on the recertified MAX than certain other Boeing planes.

They have gone though the whole plane with a fine toothed comb, Identifying any other potential problems. It will probably be the safest Boeing in the sky.

This whole MAX situation has made me very nervous about flying on the 787 (built in the same era) or the 737 NG (while it lacks MCAS, something else could theoretically put the stabilizer massively out of trim, and this whole situation has proven pilots have problems recovering from out-of-trim stabilizers)

[elcomet]

What if they missed another flaw ? Some older boeing planes have been flying for years without an issue, I'd rather fly on those.

[x86_64Ubuntu]

Yep, the issue is the culture and the idea of "we are going to make subtle yet fatal changes to the plane, but not require pilots to learn about these changes" that's got everyone shook.

[simion314]

>They have gone though the whole plane with a fine toothed comb,

Are we sure this is happening? This is a modified airplane so they are checking the new addition but are they checking say the wheels or all the screws because some forces might be different and numbers changed and everything should be redone.

[JustSomeNobody]

This [0] makes me nervous about flying on a 787.

[0] https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/boeing-787-dreamliner-safet...

[ls612]

The 787 has been in service for 8 years now and has never had a single fatality, never mind a hull loss yet. Your fears may be misplaced.

[perl4ever]

People have been talking about Boeing management grinding things down for years too; it's just that it finally had unignorable consequences. A lot of the difficulty with preventing and evaluating bad stuff is how long it takes for a big structure to rot.

[jdsully]

They have only two flight computers - either of which are capable of crashing the plane. With only two its not always possible to know which is incorrect.

Regardless of how much you go over it you can’t fix a fundamentally broken design.

[zajd]

> They have gone though the whole plane with a fine toothed comb, Identifying any other potential problems. It will probably be the safest Boeing in the sky.

More like they've done the bare minimum to get the planes back in the air. The entire point of the plane is to avoid having to certify a new frame ie avoid doing exactly what you're implying they've done.

[bradstewart]

They wanted to avoid a new type certification which would force all existing 737 pilots to be retrained and certificated on this aircraft.

They can go through the whole plane with a fine toothed comb and still end up with a common type.

[salawat]

They've already recommended simulator time as a requirement to fly it. The shared type cert to avoid retraining is kind of moot.

The sad thing is this could be seen as a successful (in the Pyrrhic sense) business move by Boeing in that they were given an impossible goal, secured sufficient sales to airlines, and show all indications of being on the road to getting away with it if there are still sufficient people out there who are still willing to fly on one afterward.

Just gotta be willing to crack a few eggs, and cash in on that goodwill on occasion, yet the business churns on regardless.

It's a bit sickening to be honest. To be faced with what we're finding, and to show all indications of just moving on with business as usual.

It makes it hard to take anything seriously anymore. Cripes, I used to hang aerospace over my teams as a "you could be in a situation where I'd reject this work wholesale because you haven't convinced me you've thought it through, and I don't feel like killing people down the road."

Now the tables have turned... Even there, in what I thought was the last bastion of "it absolutely must be provably right", it seems that wasn't ever the case, or if it was, the rot has set in so badly as to leave it unrecognizable.

Leaves me feeling like a Diogenes, searching desperately for someone who isn't cutting irresponsible corners, and is dedicated to not just achieving the mission, but caring about how they do it.

Sorry, bit of a tangent there... But jeez. I figured it'd be bad. Not this bad though.

[beefield]

To be fair, flying in MAX was/would still be orders of magnitude safer than pretty much any other transportation method outside flying.

(No, I don't think I still want to fly that, either)

[morsch]

Only per mile. Per journey it's the most dangerous transport typically used. Per hour it's about average.

This doesn't matter if you have to make a specific trip (the number of miles is fixed), but that's not always the case. Whatever you do, don't walk, that seems to be the most dangerous common mode of transportation (unless motorcycles are common).

"Aviation industry insurers base their calculations on the deaths per journey statistic while the aviation industry itself generally uses the deaths per kilometre statistic in press releases."

Source: Transport comparisons in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety

[svara]

Your point that accidents per journey might be more interesting than accidents per passenger-kilometer is a very good one, however it seems like the data in the table in the Wikipedia article you linked is a bit old ("The following table displays these statistics for the United Kingdom 1990–2000").

If you take a look at the "Fatalities per trillion revenue passenger kilometres" plot in the same article, it looks like flying got a lot safer since 2000 (maybe ~10x?).

The conclusion that flying isn't a lot safer than other common modes of transport when you compare by journey is still correct though... (But maybe it is a little bit safer, or similarly safe).

[HarryHirsch]

The other thing is that the statistics for car travel include all journeys by car. You can do a lot to improve your own safety by avoiding the common risk factors: not driving drunk, driving in daytime (that also avoids drunk drivers), not being in an all-teenage vehicle, driving well-rested & so on. If you do that, per journey you'll be safer than in your regular commercial aviation airplane.

[majewsky]

> don't walk, that seems to be the most dangerous common mode of transportation

Not walking is also a bad idea, though. I don't have numbers at hand, but I can imagine that a sedentary lifestyle gives you way more micromorts than the risk of traffic accidents when walking to work.

[BurningFrog]

Tons of people die in their sleep!

So, just to be safe, don't ever sleep...

[perl4ever]

Walking to work does not prevent a sedentary lifestyle. A little exercise doesn't make you fit.

I mean, it's pretty common for people to have a heart attack from sudden exertion, too. Like snow shoveling.

And I remember Douglas Adams died after a workout and he was probably reasonably fit at the time (in theory anyway).

So don't exercise.

[tigershark]

From my back of the envelope calculations at the time of the second crash they had worse safety than a car. Did you run the actual numbers?

[pbhjpbhj]

I'm confident I'm a safer driver than at least 50% of the people on the roads - if I thought pilots were only as safe as an average driver I'd be worried.

[gmac]

I'm confident I'm a safer driver than at least 50% of the people on the roads

So is almost everybody else. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority#Driving_a...

[perl4ever]

Everybody may think they are "skilled", but any given person can in principle assess their own risk more accurately than assuming they are average. Don't confuse safety with nebulous ideas of skill or ability.

You can compare your insurance rate with the average, and you can consider objective factors that are really blatant such as whether you drive drunk, or when falling asleep, or while texting. And of course you can compare the number of accidents and tickets you have to average.

[finnh]

Well, if you're only claiming median skill I don't think that applies.

[ddalex]

80% of the drivers rank themselves in the top 20% of skill

[techslave]

even if that were true (statistically it isn’t), unlike with a plane roads aren’t so tightly controlled and other drivers are barely competent. head-ons happen all too frequently and i’m sure one of the victims is ... a safe driver.

driving isn’t unsafe because of your own (self-assessed) skill, it’s unsafe because of that other 50%.

no matter how safe of a driver you are, you should be worried.

[pbhjpbhj]

I should write a treatise in every post :o)

I'm aware that people over-estimate their skill, I'd have been inclined to say "in the top 20%" otherwise, lol. Whilst my reaction time has slowed slightly, and my focus deteriorated a little with age (IMO), I've been driving cars for 25 years without an at fault collision (taxi driver hit me when I braked hard to avoid killing a dog -- we were sub 30mph otherwise I'd have chosen to hit the dog). Have avoided some accidents for sure. I also hold a full motorbike license, have driven minibuses and car&trailer pairs. I'm aged enough to have calmed down and having ridden motorbikes feel I've much more road awareness than the average driver.

Also, I considered head-ons, etc., where the injured party is not at fault - but whilst they increase the risk an experienced and competent drive can avoid some collisions, mitigate the harm of others, and will nonetheless reduce their chances of being in a collision from their side. If 50% of injured parties are the cause, and I can reduce that 50% by 50% then I've still reduced my chance of being injured by 25%.

Does anyone think that doesn't put me in the bottom 50% for risk?

Still, the point stands that I expect aeroplanes to be better maintained and have more redundant and fail-safe systems than a car; and expect pilots to be better trained and more competent (prevented from driving drugged/drunk/tired more than truck/car drivers, etc.) than the average car driver. So, aeroplanes only having the same per-mile safety as cars is [would be] terrible.

[perl4ever]

skill != safety, because how much of a safety margin you leave generally swamps most of the effect of skill. And your safety margin reduces the effect of other drivers' stupidity.

And I hate it when people say "statistically that isn't true". How can a fact about an individual be statistically not true? Is it statistically true that I have 2.4 (or whatever) children, even if I have none?

[beefield]

I guess I should have been more prudent. Some time ago I recall reading here at HN some crude calculations about this where I got this impression.

[vinay427]

Sure, though many people aren't deciding between flying a 737 MAX and driving or taking a bus. They're often deciding between flying on a specific flight that uses a 737 MAX and flying at a different time and/or on a different airline that doesn't use a 737 MAX.

[lotsofpulp]

Most people are just choosing the cheapest flight that fits their schedule, which is usually 1.

[rsynnott]

Sure, but that's not really the choice, usually. You would in most circumstances have a choice between a MAX and an -800 or a320.

[techie128]

Unless they redesign the airframe, I don't think there is any way of fixing the aircraft. One of the requirements ought to be that the aircraft is capable of gliding when it loses power. Given that its airframe is unbalanced it will have a hard, neigh, impossible time "gliding". It will most certainly plunge to the earth killing all the souls onboard.

[utopian3]

I mean, I have already flown on them dozens of times prior to the catastrophic events, so I’m not really opposed to boarding them again after recertification.

Then again, it’s not clear to me what else they “covered up” or issues that this new article is focused on. I’d be happy for the FAA to delay them further and get to the bottom of this.

[tim333]

I'm one of those who would fly it. It's about figuring probabilities rather than gut feel. The odds of me dying riding a motorcycle which I do sometimes are like 10,000x those of dying in any airliner crash.

[perl4ever]

You seem to be confusing "known unknowns" with "unknown unknowns". I find this unaccountably irritating because everybody intuitively knows the difference, and that it's huge, except when they pretend to be "rational".

What's the probability of something happening when the probability you are given is probably wrong?

[tim333]

I'm more just dividing the historical statistics eg.

>commercial airlines in the United States between 2000 and 2010 was about 0.2 deaths per 10 billion passenger-miles

and

>390 motorcyclist deaths per billion vehicle miles

dividing gives 19500x per mile. Though I do more miles by air. It's all a bit approximate.

[asenk]

1. You can't claim your risk of dying using a particular method of transportation is above another method just by looking at per mile death rates unless you travel a similar distance in both, or say it in a context of making a decision of using one or the other to travel from place to place (although to be precise the length of the trip depends somewhat on the used method).

2. The commercial airlines figure which you've used is not from using the particular method of transportation, 737 max, which the use of you are justifying with the comparison.

3. If you wear a helmet, don't ride drunk, don't speed and otherwise follow traffic rules it will make riding a motorcycle a lot safer than average.

[tim333]

Well, yeah it's complicated. From the perspective of an all knowing god your chances of dying in some way are probably either 1 or 0 depending on what fate will bring so practical probability estimates are guesses based on limited information. Based on my limited information I'd be happy enough to fly the max. It'll probably be the world's most scrutinised aircraft by the time it flies again anyway.

[perl4ever]

Guesses based on limited information need to include the information you do have, and not include information you don't have. If a probability doesn't reflect what you know and don't know, it's not valid, period, limited information in general not withstanding.