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Comment by heavyset_go | Hacker News Reader

The worst part of these revelations is that the aviation industry is exalted as the standard other industries should look up to when it comes to safety.

If Boeing can't escape the perverse incentives that tempt every company, then what company can and why are we relying on this economic model to drive such a high stakes industry?

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>The worst part of these revelations is that the aviation industry is exalted as the standard other industries should look up to when it comes to safety.

I don't see why that's "the worst part". Flying is the safest mode of travel, and among airliners the 737NG is one of the safest planes in aviation history. The fact that cracks have been discovered doesn't change that, and the routine inspections which have discovered these cracks and will lead to them being fixed is precisely the reason why these aircraft, and the aviation industry as a whole, are so incredibly safe.

In fact, finding and correcting faults in airplanes happens constantly. Up until the Boeing debacle this was just something that happend while nobody was looking. Now journalists are riding the scare wave generated by the relevations following the 737 max crashes and dragging all these fairly routine happenings out into the open with disproportionate coverage.

The primary reason why air travel is so safe is that each and every failure in production becomes a major news item for days.

So the system broke somehow, and the news will keep hammering it until someone somewhere learns their lesson. We hope.

Yes, they will go after a bunch of false positives too in the process, but the thing with weeding out the true negatives reliably is that you have to be paranoid about the false positives too.

Cutting the margins too fine and skipping the 'paranoid, inefficient' checks is how we got here.

Focusing a really big spotlight on the entire industry is part of the feedback loop.

The media is ignoring 80 to 90 percent of incidents that happen in aviation that lead to investigations. A fair bunch results in technical changes to aircraft, but it is mostly too boring for a layperson.

The Politics of Attention means we've always been reactive. Too much outrage. Too few eyeballs. Resulting in triage. Made worse as investigative journalism has been gutted these last few decades. Made worse as engagement driven business models (ad revenue) begat outrage culture.

>and the routine inspections which have discovered these cracks

Unfortunately this was not a routine check, it seems that routine checks did not found this issue and only after checks were done specifically to look for this issue more cracks were found.

> Flying is the safest mode of travel

By mile or by minute? It might seem pedantic, but it just means you're better off flying from New York to LA than driving. It doesn't mean you're better off than staying put.

Cracks are not necessarily something critical. As long as they are identified early enough the affected parts are simply added to the relevant checks (C, D, whatever) and after a predefined number of cycles or hours. Also ad-hoc checks might be required.

Aviation is the standard exactly because defects are identified and handled the way they are, they also tend to be remedied quickly. If not all affected aircraft are grounded, like the 737MAX.

These 737NG cracks can by no means be compared to the 737MAX clusterfuck. The former is pretty normal while the latter is a safety and certification issue of enormous dimensions.

They are the standard. Commercial airline safety issues are uncommon enough to be newsworthy.

Boeing's customers care a lot more than most automaker's customers. 1 in 4 cars on US roads have known unresolved safety recalls.

> The worst part of these revelations is that the aviation industry is exalted as the standard other industries should look up to when it comes to safety.

If airplanes were like computers ...

Relying on profit-motivated companies to consistently provide value at safety critical levels seems short sighted.

That's why we rely on regulation and oversight for safety, and profit motive and competition to provide value.

Sure, it definitely works great.

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