> the computer then calculates just the right amount of engine thrust so the pilots don’t use more than necessary. “The goal is to lower the power used on takeoff,” he said. “That reduces engine wear and saves money” on fuel and maintenance.
This is not an accident, but rather a feature of capitalism, this time it is human lives that are commodified and have costs externalized unto.
This means they are also leaving a safety margin of fuel, even though that costs extra money.
There’s no need to have market based competition to keep costs down. Look at USPS for example. That operation is run without a profit motive, serves literally every zip code in the US (by definition), and runs healthily year after year (except for the part where Congress imposed arbitrary pension funding requirements[1] and private capital interests have been chomping at the bit to buy up all the real-estate holdings).
They also don’t have UPS’s problem of not putting AC in their delivery vehicles.
[1] https://ips-dc.org/how-congress-manufactured-a-postal-crisis...
This feature of capitalism caused the money to be invested to achieve this efficiency, and also the systems and processes in place to ensure it was implemented properly; with sanity checks, authoritative oversight to halt ops when something was determined to be off, manual backup systems in place and well trained on, a fix rapidly deployed, and new testing put in place to detect any similar bugs in the future.
Yes indeed the stench of capitalism is strong here! </s>
Comment OP isn’t wrong entirely - this is the result of an economic decision. Not without it’s good effects - both can be true, but this is not a safety optimization by any means.
Many aviation accidents can be traced back to capitalistic pressure - cost saving on inspections, time saving for flow, etc. It’s appropriate to ask whether this is true here as well.
There are many considerations to setting takeoff thrust like climb speed limits, tire speed limits, elevation, temperature, engine-out safety margins, and many more I’m sure I don’t know about with my limited flight knowledge.
This is before we get into discussing weight load, which is primarily a factor of fuel load, which is also not just filled to 100% for every flight, but carefully calculated based on distance, weight, wind speed, etc. to not carry unnecessary fuel, which is also a huge efficiency boost.
In short there are safety reasons to use the appropriate (non-maximum) thrust on these types of planes just as much as there are efficiency reasons.
Capitalistic market forces are a big reason we have such an amazing airline industry with planes that are technological marvels of comfort, speed, and efficiency. Capitalism drove 120 years of relentless R&D into commercial flight systems, from the very first flight in 1903.
Not paying for necessary safety inspections is not “capitalistic” in any way. It seems like an ideological battle to use the term that way.
The influence of capitalism would be on the requirements. But assuming the requirements are well-considered trying to minimize fuel and engine usage to meet those requirements is a good thing.
If the engineering requirement is “do something that brings you close to the margin of safety in order to save resources”, is that not an influence of capitalism?
How to hit that line precisely and with confidence is where engineering takes over.
If efficiency is the curse capitalism brings us, I’m feeling a little better about it.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/feb/28/ryanair-sta...
You’re trolling, right? That seems like a really implausible world view.
Software to optimize resource usage while providing a service => blame capitalism is che-guevara-tshirt-edgelord level of inane.