[JumpCrisscross]

> only reason nobody was injured this time was nobody was sitting in the seats next to the door plug

This was a serious fuck-up. But it remains that there was at risk no more than one, maybe two, fatalities. That isn’t enough to justify the claim that “safety is getting worse.”

[StreetChief]

"Only two people would have died, so it's really not that bad," is wild. What if it were you sitting at that seat and you died? Still not that bad an outcome?

[JumpCrisscross]

> "Only two people would have died, so it's really not that bad," is wild.

Straw man. Nobody says even a single death isn't tragic. What I'm saying is it doesn't overwhelm trillions of miles of safe flight. Not flying a 737 Max 8, only to go onto a Spirit Aerosystems-assembled Airbus, doensn't make sense. (Note: not implicating Spirit. Just saying that the window of culpabilitiy extends more in their direction than it does across every 737 Max.)

[StreetChief]

I guess if you think all miles of flight are the same, then sure, the 737 max 8 and 9 have trillion of miles.

[JumpCrisscross]

> if you think all miles of flight are the same

OP said air safety is going down broadly [1]. So yes, considering all air transport miles is valid given the context.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38929237

[StreetChief]

more accidents is less safe, anyway you cut it. I really can't understand how you can view flying as not being less safe in this moment. If you want to do integration over huge time spans to make your point, lets start at zero and go to infinity... human lifespan is 0 years long average over history, seeing as we didn't exist for some period of time. So any changes to human life in shorter time spans is completely meaningless to an average. Is this 0 year lifespan a useful statistic?

[JumpCrisscross]

> more accidents is less safe, anyway you cut it. I really can't understand how you can view flying as not being less safe in this moment

You’re proposing crashes are autocorrelated. They’re not. They would be in a vacuum filled with spherical cows. But grounding and investigating takes care of that.

This is related to the fallacy of thinking if a coin has come up heads thrice in a row, it’s more likely to come up tails the fourth time. It’s not. We have a lot of innocuous flight miles as data from which to make robust statements, particularly when it comes to characterising the safety of the entire airline industry.

Put another way, on which day are you safer, the day before the accident or the day after?

[stouset]

> how you can view flying as not being less safe in this moment

There has been one passenger fatality aboard a major U.S. airline since November 2001.

[flashback2199]

In a brand new plane? Yes it is.

[JumpCrisscross]

> In a brand new plane?

Statistically, there is no difference between a new plane and one that's been flying for 18 years [1].

Given dying because an installer fucked up feels mighty similar to dying because a maintenance tech fucked up, I don't see a rational reason to over-penalise fabrication errors to the extent that it overrules millions of successful flight miles. (Design mistakes are categorially different.)

[1] http://awg.aero/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/analysisofimpact....

[flashback2199]

I'm pretty sure if you personally drove a new car off the lot and the door fell off you would not believe that quality were unchanged from your prior impression of that car company.

Just because it's happening to other people doesn't make it okay to hand-wave away safety.

And by the way, so far NTSB believes it's not a fabrication error but an assembly error. NTSB suspects 4 bolts were never screwed in.

[JumpCrisscross]

> if you personally drove a new car off the lot and the door fell off you would not believe that quality were unchanged from your prior impression of that car company

As a layman, no. Were I looking for more than a Twitter level of analysis, it would be an indication for investigation. Not grounds for conclusion.

More directly, even as a layman, if I were to use that anecdote as grounds to condemn the state of car manufacturing in summa, that would be irrational.

> NTSB suspects 4 bolts were never screwed in

Source? Last I saw, they couldn't find the bolts. It takes lab work to ascertain whether they ever existed.

[flashback2199]

NTSB are doing that lab work right now in Washington D.C.

You seem to not know the meaning of suspect, so here is the definition:

Dictionary Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more sus·pect verb 3rd person present: suspects /səˈspek(t)/ 1. have an idea or impression of the existence, presence, or truth of (something) without certain proof. "if you suspect a gas leak, do not turn on an electric light"

Have a great day sir.

[JumpCrisscross]

> seem to not know the meaning of suspect

Suspicion doesn't mean baseless hypothesis, e.g. "Mars is an orange." The NTSB would never say (and has not said, as you've conceded) it "suspects" the "bolts were never screwed in."

Were there a lack of marks where the bolts should have exerted clamping force, there would be basis for suspicion. That isn't proof. But it's more than a hypothesis.