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Comment by CrazyStat | Hacker News Reader

Given the current safety record of the 737 Max (2 crashes out of ~half a million flights), if you flew on one every day for the next 50 years there's about a 7% chance that you'd be in a crash. This is ignoring any improvements that might be made--to the plane itself or to pilots' knowledge and training--before it's allowed back into service.

If you flew, say, 10 times a year rather than 365.25, all on the 737 Max, it's a fraction of a percent chance.

Boeing's behavior was very poor and they have been rightfully taken to task for it. Aviation safety standards are incredibly high and the 737 Max didn't live up to those standards. The focus on cost cutting, selling critical redundant sensors as an upgrade to milk a little more cash out of buyers, mocking customers who wanted simulator training for their pilots, and more are all indicative of a bad corporate culture.

But the 737 Max is still a very safe plane. I have no qualms about flying on it.

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'If you flew, say, 10 times a year rather than 365.25, all on the 737 Max, it's a fraction of a percent chance.'

This works out to around 0.2% (1 in 2000) which is spectacularly poor odds for modern aviation where the typical risk of a crash on a single commercial airliner is around 1 in 5 million (less than 1 in 100 000 for 10 flights per year over 50 years - so basically 50 times less safe).

Your math seems a little off there, or maybe just a typo--I get slightly under 1 in 10,000--but you are correct that the 737 Max crash rate (~1 in 250000) is much worse than other contemporary airliners. In fact the only modern airliner with a worse crash rate was the Concorde.

I'm not trying to defend the 737 Max or Boeing, I'm just trying to point out that even a plane which is dramatically worse than any other active airliner is still, in absolute terms, very very safe. Our safety standards are incredibly high and we are absolutely justified in enforcing those standards, but people shouldn't be scared to fly on the 737 Max when it comes back into service.

> But the 737 Max is still a very safe plane. I have no qualms about flying on it.

No, no it's not safe.

Your entire argument is complete nonsense.

When the AoE sensor is damaged, the chance of a MAX problem is 100%.

> But the 737 Max is still a very safe plane. I have no qualms about flying on it.

It's grounded world-wide, so you're the only one.

> When the AoE sensor is damaged, the chance of a MAX problem is 100%.

I believe you mean the AoA sensor.

> It's grounded world-wide, so you're the only one.

Yes I'm sure the reason it's grounded world wide is because, after a worldwide census, we determined that all but one person living on earth had qualms about flying on it.

If you want to disagree with me that's fine but don't make stupid arguments.

I'm inferring that you believe that the regulators were wrong to ground it.

That's not what I was trying to say. I think grounding it was entirely reasonable. Boeing failed to uphold the aviation safety standards that we have chosen to expect and enforce, and there should be consequences for that. Those consequences can very reasonably include grounding the plane until we're satisfied that the problems have been fixed.

At the same time, I think we should recognize that our safety standards are extremely high. There's nothing wrong with that. But a plane can fail to meet our extremely high standards and still be very safe. In a parallel universe where we decide to accept a somewhat lower standard of safety, deciding not to ground the 737 Max would also be a reasonable decision.

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