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Comment by hannasanarion | Hacker News Reader

Boeing executive decision makers don't. They never fly commercial, they have private jets.

Interesting side note, Boeing does make private jets - the Boeing Business Jet family[0].

But Boeing executives doesn't fly on these, since they're too large for even CEOs. Boeing executives fly on one of the three Boeing owned Bombardier Challenger 650s [1][2][3].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Business_Jet

[1] https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N541BA/908...

[2] https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N543BA/908...

[3] https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N544BA/884...

Former CEO James McNerney used to fly in the BBJ all the time. Sometimes he was the only passenger.

General aviation (private jets included) has a higher fatality rate than commercial aviation [1]. Even after backing out amateur general aviation, it is still more dangerous [2], though not egregiously so like personal planes, and helicopters make a sizeable chunk of fatality rate that is lumped into the same category as private jets.

But it is still poor optics to rarely dog food your own products.

[1] https://qz.com/work/1169517/executives-are-dying-in-private-...

[2] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/corporate-jets-commerci...

I think there are a few other factors to take into account, such as private jets flying faster on average, no layovers, etc. Looking only at flight hours doesn't really show the risk for an individual (e.g. an exec choosing between commercial flights and private flights). My guess is that the average exec is about as likely to die from one vs the other since the exec would spend more time flying in the commercial jet.

So it's really not a fair comparison and I wouldn't be surprised if they're functionally equivalent after taking into account all major variables.

Including BBJs, which are 737s. Note there's a BBJ MAX.

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