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Comment by veryworried | Hacker News Reader

What’s more criminal is not buying the extra safety features. Creating safety features, while important, is not free. Someone has to pay for it, no matter how many lives they save. Hard to fault Boeing there.

It’s like side air bags in cars. Some have them, some don’t, but if you want them you will pay an extra 2 grand as each airbag unit is easily a grand each, and must be replaced completely if it ever deploys. If you buy your teenager a car you can decide if you will pay extra for those safety features.

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Sure, safety features aren't free, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be included. If that raises your cost, you increase the cost of the plane, not offer it as an optional add-on.

Raising the cost per plane is not so simple of a solution in some markets, and may make it very difficult to stay competitive, putting you out of business there entirely. Also, not all planes might be purchased for passenger travel, maybe a plane is used for package delivery and doesn’t need to come with so much extra safety. Who knows.

In a world where air travel is remarkably safe, throwing in the extra fire extinguisher that may make the difference between a near miss and a tragedy seems like it'd pay for itself many times over versus the alternative even if you just consider the PR impact.

My thoughts, too. Certain core safety features should be included by default, to avoid the possibility of an uninformed buyer dooming the people flying their airline.

Auto manufacturers don't make an engine compartment firewall optional, or sell full-strength seatbelts as an upgrade.

But where do you draw the line? Optional tempered glass? Optional seat belts? Optional ABS?

I think the idea is that some safety features are so important they shouldn't be optimal.

" Optional tempered glass? Optional seat belts? Optional ABS?"

Not arguing against safety, and this doesn't relate to aircraft at all, but your examples are interesting.

Pretty sure all three of those were optional when they were new things. The pattern of being optional on luxury vehicles, then standard on luxury models / optional on normal models, and finally, standard on all vehicles...is common.

when you buy a car do you just buy a tank or apc?

I'm sorry, but the safety features in question here were software upgrades. The incremental cost to Boeing to add it to every aircraft during manufacturing would be negligible.

In my view it should be criminal to withhold such safety features for profit.

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