[bumby]

>close calls outnumber accidents in this field by a ton to one

The irony is that the reason the safety numbers are that good is because aerospace is one of the only 5+ sigma quality/safety industries.

[dsfyu404ed]

All industries have close calls outnumbering real accidents by a ton.

The fact that the absolute numbers are low does not change any calculations that follow from that ratio.

[bumby]

Look at the history of aviation before it was a 5-sigma industry. The safety record was much worse.

If your point is that close calls will always outnumber the actual accidents, that’s like saying the number of doctor visits will outnumber the number of cancer diagnoses. Safety incidents are always a subset of a larger set that also contains close calls. By their nature, most safety incidents require multiple things to go wrong, which means there will be more times that some, but not all, things will go wrong to create a close call. It’s almost such a trivial point that it’s hardly salient enough to mention.