https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Boeing_737_operators
> The 737 MAX's Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) has come under scrutiny for faulty angle-of-attack readings in the Lion Air accident[126] and the apparent similarity of the Ethiopian Airlines crash.[127]
> On March 11, 2019, in response to the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) ordered the suspension of operations of the 96 Boeing 737 MAX 8s operated by Chinese-based airlines, citing the similarity between the two accidents. A number of airlines and regulatory authorities around the world followed suit, though some airlines still continued to operate the type as of this date.[128] On the same day, in response to the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes, Indonesia ordered the temporary suspension of operations of eleven Boeing 737 MAX 8s operated by Garuda Indonesia and Lion Air.[129][130] Inspection is set to begin on 12 March, 2019.[131]
We know very little about the Ethiopian Airlines crash (and yes I've see flightradar24 data). The speculation is worried it is related MCAS like the Lion Air crash, but until we know that even in a preliminary way it feels a little knee-jerky to boycott 737-MAX 8s.
Assuming the flight data recorders are recoverable, we'll hopefully learn more and can discover if there's any similarities between the two accidents. If they are both MCAS related I suspect we'll see a international grounding of the aircraft class.
Now that's not a whole lot still, and the per mile stat is still important in that one should not choose a cross state drive over a flight for safety reasons.
Do you mind sharing your back-of-the-napkin math? It seems wrong given the low probability of crash per airplane flight (e.g., there are about 100,000 flights daily and close to zero per day fatal crashes). In fact, about one fatal air crash happens every 7,000,000 airplane flights. I don't know anybody who knows anybody that has died in a commercial airplane crash. I had 2 friends that died in traffic accidents. Anecdotes aren't data, but no one would be surprised by these numbers.
Here are the odds of dying by cause: https://www.nsc.org/work-safety/tools-resources/injury-facts...
> > > > > In 2017 there were 0.06 deaths per million flights of large,
> > > > > commercial airliners:
> > > > >
> > > > > https://www.reuters.com/article/us-aviation-safety/2017-safest-year-on-record-for-commercial-passenger-air-travel-groups-idUSKBN1EQ17L
> > > > >
> > > > > By contrast, in 2009 white people averaged 1,500 trips per year:
> > > > >
> > > > > https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/2010cpr/chap1.cfm
> > > > >
> > > > > Multiply 1,500 trips/person by 360 million people (2009 U.S.
> > > > > population), divide ~35,000 road fatalities by the number of trips,
> > > > > and multiple by 1,000,000, and you literally get 0.06 fatalities per
> > > > > million trips. Even if the numbers are slightly inaccurate
> > > > > (different years, different demographics, wrong cohorts), the point
> > > > > is that strictly speaking flying really isn't that much safer than
> > > > > driving. Certainly nothing like the several orders of magnitude
> > > > > claimed; not when using the more meaningful metric of fatalities per
> > > > > trip.
> ...
> > > > I don't think that normalizes for the number of people on the plane,
> > > > though.
> > >
> > > Hmmmmm. Good point... I think.
> > >
> > like, does a flight of 100 people count as a single "trip", or as 100? If
> > it only counts as one, then you should normalize, because I'm sure they
> > don't count each crash as a single fatality.
>
> Here are numbers from 2018 from the original source:
>
> https://news.aviation-safety.net/2019/01/01/aviation-safety-network-releases-2018-airliner-accident-statistics/
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SDp7p1y6m7N5xD5_fpOkYOrJvd68V7iy6etXy2cetb8/edit#gid=1448957446
>
> That's 0.39 fatal *accidents* per million flights, based on 15 fatal
> flights and 38,100,0000 departures. There were 556 total deaths from those
> 15 fatal flights.[1]
>
> The question, is how many passengers on average per flight. If we divide
> the number of deaths (556) by the number of fatal flights (15), we get 37
> on average. If we divide the number of total passengers for 2018 (4.3
> billion[2]) by the total number of flights (38,100,000), we get 112
> passengers on average.
>
> So average number of fatalities per departure could be somewhere between
> 0.01 and 0.003. Definitely lower than 0.06 but nowhere close to 750x
> lower.
>
> [1] I'm using passenger+cargo because there's only one figure given for
> total number of departures and I assume that's the aggregate. Counting
> just passengers we get 0.36 instead of 0.39 which isn't much of a
> difference, probably because cargo flights have only 2 people on board.
> Still, it would be nice to know the total number of passenger-only
> departures.
>
> [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/564717/airline-industry-passenger-traffic-globally/I think this is gonna be a big issue and we'll see the entire fleet scraped.