And when you say "Aviation is safe" you mean specifically Scheduled Aviation ie people buy tickets and go on a plane with some guys they've never met flying it. Scheduled Aviation is remarkably safe.

GA (General aviation, people who own a little plane and maybe just fly it for fun, or it's a professional expense for say a plastic surgeon and allows them to fly 300 miles home on Thursday evening after working four days in the big city) is not safe. A few hundred of these people die, not just smash up their planes or get hurt, but die, sometimes with family or friends aboard, every year. It might make the local TV news, at most. Unless they were a celebrity it won't make national news.

Commercial is more complicated because there are so many possibilities. Cargo is pretty safe, if your job is to move boxes of stuff from one big jet airport to another in a civilized country you'll likely die in bed of old age. But if you fly a police helicopter, or medevac, or you're a crop duster, or you fly custom pick up jobs, when the client wants and where they want - those jobs can go badly wrong much too easily, without you really understanding what you've got yourself into until it's too late. These people are (or at least should be) better trained than in GA, but they're also often flying more demanding missions. You may operate out of somewhere with not-so-great capabilities, on short notice, in poor weather and/or at night, and you may be expected to go places that you ordinarily wouldn't, close to buildings, close to other aircraft, even close to the ground - all of which narrows your options if things go wrong.

Military is also pretty bad as I understand it. It needn't be, but there's some sense that the job is "supposed" to be dangerous, which maybe makes sense for front line infantry, but really not for the vast majority of military pilots - way too many of them die far from any enemy, as a result of somebody screwing up, just like in GA or commercial.

That's an insane story. As much as I hate flying, modern aviation infrastructure is one of mankind's most impressive feats.

> Airplanes rarely get scrapped for parts because of incidents like this. They have pretty extensive maintenance and repair checklists, ...

And yet these "extensive maintenance checklists" did not prevent such a serious malfunction. They were lucky that the weather was cooperating. In bad weather and strong winds who knows what would have happened.

It really is amazing how resilient planes are, I'm pretty hooked on this YouTube series in which a guy gets given a plane that's been sitting in the open for 15 years or so on the condition he can make the thing run again. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5IMg7-HLL1Y4K06HdsDB...

The specific plane (1), N955AT, is 22.6 years old. So not young, but not completely geriatric either. Delta seems to be the only major operator of the plane type, so don't think there'd be too many buyers. Delta also seems to have a fair few in storage(2) so a fair guess would be that they'd scrap it but keep the parts that they could still use on other planes as spares.

1) https://www.airfleets.net/ficheapp/plane-b717-55017.htm 2) https://www.airfleets.net/listing/b717-1-statdesc.htm

Oooh, this is something I know a little about. At university we were tasked with building software for estimating the usable area of a runway given its configuration and obstacles.

Runways have 3-4 different defined areas, each with different properties and usable in different ways. For example, the grass at the sides is important for safety, must be cleared a certain distance back, must not rise above a certain level above the tarmac, etc, and all those rules are distinct from the rules that apply to the concrete at the ends of the runway, distinct from the rules regarding surrounding buildings and trees, and so on. The area managed as a runway can extend kilometers out on every side.

Now, if you have a plane break down at one end, or a support vehicle crash on the grass or something, you don't actually have to put the runway out of action, but you do have to re-declare the usable distance, and that's based on the location, size, and importantly height of the obstacle. You then need to plot the angle of landing/takeoff based on that height, accounting for the segment of the runway it's in, and the given runway's pre-approved angle (varies by city/terrain).

It was a fascinating project and a good example of how problems are often so much more complex and nuanced than they initially appear.

Overweight landings are a thing and it's very, very rare for the airplane to break apart or even be damaged when performing them: https://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/articles/qtr_...

Generally, the displaced threshold is not because of the load of touching down, but because of clearance of obstacles. When landing, where you are aiming to land, and a standard glideslope, puts you over obstacles at a certain height. In some cases if you landed on the very end of he the runway, that would cause you to collide with (or have too low a margin of safety) over obstacles before the runway. The displaced threshold moves the glideslope further forward, allowing for better clearance over obstacles.

Source: Advisory Circular 150/5300-13B Airport Design, 3.5.3 (https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/...)

  When it is impractical to locate a threshold at the beginning of the runway, it may be
  necessary to apply a displaced threshold. A displaced threshold reduces runway length
  available for landings in one direction. The portion of the runway prior to the displaced
  threshold typically remains available for takeoffs. Depending on the circumstances
  surrounding the displacement, operations from the opposite runway end may or may not
  be affected. Refer to Appendix H for related information on declared distances.
  Generally, a runway threshold displacement provides:
  1. A means for obtaining additional RSA prior to the threshold.
  2. A means for obtaining additional ROFA prior to the threshold.
  3. A means for locating the RPZ to mitigate incompatible land uses.
  4. A means for obstacle clearance prior to the threshold.
  5. Increased arrival capacity with certain parallel runway approach procedures. See
  FAA Order 7110.308, Simultaneous Dependent Approaches to Closely Spaced
  Parallel Runways

Glossary:

  RSA: Runway Safety Area
  ROFA: Runway Object Free Area
  RPZ: Runway Protection Zone

Note that all of the given reasons are for clearance of obstacles or various other mandatory safety areas based on clearance from taxiways or other runway traffic, not for durability of the runway.

I don't think the airplane is going to break up, just that it would need inspection and perhaps repair if touching down over weight.

Blancolirio covers this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D2Kj0t4t9s

Planes have to be sturdy and flexible to handle the environment they spend most of their time cruising in. This is probably nothing next to the turbulence planes are expected to shrug off while maintaining a ground level environment eight miles up for decades of service life.

Flying for me ain't fun but as soon the bird is on the ground I'm all good!

based on the photos, they did pop the slides on this incident. but evacuations are often not called in these situations if there isn't a fire or something.

there's a real risk of injury from evacuating, so it needs consideration by the pilot.

The prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder would disagree.

What's the actual point of Youtube Sharts? It just seems like encouragement for people to film vertically and not frame the shot well.

And on the watching side you're pushed into a needlessly unfriendly UI. Like I generally just use the YT web interface and don't go out of my way to routinely yt-dlp or Newpipe, but now I might have to change that.

you can right click a shorts video, copy the URL, and paste that to get the normal non-crippled YouTube player

https://youtu.be/W12w7NkqGCM