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Comment by selectodude | Hacker News Reader

The issue is that non-commercial aircraft are being held to the same standard as a 777, not that the 777 is held to an extremely high standard. There's nothing safe about a Cessna 172, period, and it's far too expensive for them to redesign it. So it's going to continue to be a 60 year old plane with updated avionics.

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> There's nothing safe about a Cessna 172

Genuine question: is the 172 really considered unsafe, googling "cessna 172 safety record" brings up a lot of articles suggesting it is as safe or safer than comparable aircraft - or are you saying that light private aircraft aren't very safe in general?

Not specific to the 172, but a sizeable part of the training when getting your license is about what do when the engine stops (gliding, finding a suitable field/road/etc.) - and if you fly long enough there's a fairly good chance you'll have to put what you learned into practise.

You do realize most airplane crashes are small planes.

And most automotive crashes are non-commercial vehicles as well.

>There's nothing safe about a Cessna 172

I assume you have nothing to do with aviation. The Cessna 172 is extremely safe. In fact I'd argue that they're safer than commercial flights, because accidents are much more survivable. Safety depends purely on the pilot and the extremely well-documented maintenance routines. All accidents I've ever heard of Cessnas are caused by pilot error with minor exceptions.

Planes crashing due to pilot error is unsafe. Cars brake themselves now, Pipers have parachutes, B777s have redundancy on redundancy. The Cessna 172 is a very old design. Surviving an accident due to going too slow to die isn't "safe".

>Cars brake themselves now

Uber clearly doesn't follow this trend. Neither does Volvo, apparently https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_47utWAoupo

>Pipers have parachutes

Only because they're prone to a certain unrecoverable spin in some configurations. You can get a ballistic chute on a Cessna too if you like.

>The Cessna 172 is a very old design

That's because it's a great design, and one that has been tested for 50 years. I'd take it over modern ones.

>Surviving an accident due to going too slow to die isn't "safe".

It is if you don't die.

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