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> Airliner safety is insanely good.

Because I dug it up for another comment, commercial carriers operating under Part 121 (roughly: scheduled passenger and cargo operation) had 4 fatal incidents in the last 10 years. [0]

Totalling 6 deaths.

In 10 years of US commercial carrier aviation.

One of those was literally 'the engine exploded and threw part of the turbine into the cabin (and also shredded some of the wing)'!!

Which resulted in 1 person dying and a successful landing.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38921664

> Totalling 6 deaths. In 10 years of US commercial carrier aviation.

Okay, awesome. But how much of that was luck with the 737 Max that they didn't crash on US soil by US airlines?

Most of it. Statistically. Its not hard to assign part of the deaths from the MAXes to the US.

How much was a rigorous safety regime and high quality training?

Military training. See my comment above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38925089

Ya but your sample size is way too small to measure the death rate. Aircraft deaths are rare, but flying is too.

The two MAX 8s that fell from the sky were 100% Boeing's fault and could have happened in the US. If 5% of airline traffic is in the US you can renormalize those hundreds of dead and you get dozens dead.

We know US pilots have been warning about the same issues that led to the deathly crashes later but were ignored. The thing is, one part of US commercial aviation being so safe is a lot of pilots responsible for the jet airliners are ex-military. Someone mentioned Southwest Airlines Flight 1380, yup, captain Tammie Jo Shults was one of the first Navy female fighter pilots. Miracle on the Hudson? Sully Sullenberger was an Air Force captain and training officer. Civilian training, no matter how good, is just no replacement for military training and experience.

I can't find specific numbers but estimates say about one in three has a military background. That's an awful lot.

> I can't find specific numbers but estimates say about one in three has a military background. That's an awful lot.

Not surprising given that pilot training is really really expensive. Airlines love former military pilots because they are a significantly lower financial risk for them. Put them into type rating and off they go, it's rare that one ends up as a dud.

Let's assume American pilots are gods. They were shouting that their crafts were unsafe.

No matter how good they are and how prescient, that doesn't help them if the aircraft computer decides it's stalling, forces a nose down and they cant fight the controls.

But, even if we assume omnipotence from these American pilot gods, and assume they can fly outside the bird and Superman-style catch it, they are still only 30% of American pilots. Just another population to normalize out.

> forces a nose down and they cant fight the controls.

But that's not what happened. According to every report, it is possible to take back control, it's just very much not intuitive and the situation was confusing.

According to the Seattle Times

> However on both accident flights, the angle-of-attack sensor failure set off multiple alerts causing distraction and confusion from the moment of takeoff, even before MCAS kicked in.

> On the Ethiopian Airlines flight, for example, a “stick shaker” noisily vibrated the pilot’s control column throughout the flight, warning the plane was in danger of a stall, which it wasn’t; a computerized voice repeating a loud “Don’t sink!” warned that the jet was too close to the ground; a “clacker” making a very loud clicking sound signaled the jet was going too fast; and multiple warning lights told the crew that the speed, altitude and other readings on their instruments were unreliable.

You can find some of the US reports complaining about MCAS here https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/5766398/ASRS-Reports-... and it includes

> I manually positioned the thrust levers ASAP. This resolved the threat

Then there's

> B737 MAX First Officer reported that the aircraft pitched nose down after engaging autopilot on departure. Autopilot was disconnected and flight continued to destination

> I called "descending" just prior to the GPWS sounding "don't sink, don't sink." The Captain immediately disconnected the autopilot and pitched into a climb

Another

> Takeoff and climb in light to moderate turbulence. After flaps 1 to "up" and above clean "MASI up speed" with LNAV engaged I looked at and engaged A Autopilot. As I was returning to my PFD (Primary Flight Display) PM (Pilot Monitoring) called "DESCENDING" followed by almost an immediate: "DONT SINK DONT SINK!" I immediately disconnected AP (Autopilot) (it WAS engaged as we got full horn etc.) and resumed climb

> It kind of annoys me when comment sections are filled with people talking about how incompetent Boeing is. It feels like out of shape slobs on their La-Z-boy chairs talking about how incompetent or slow some professional sports players are.

People do this with everything though, and air travel induces a large amount of fear in the populace. Not only are we not generally comfortable flying in the air for obvious reasons, but when it happens almost everyone has to concede control to a few people in the cockpit and on the ground. Driving, even if exponentially more dangerous, affords the illusion of control of one's outcome, given driving or having someone you know driving, and control over the vehicle maintenance, etc, as well as familiarity with the control and mechanism of the vehicle. These things don't exist with airplanes for the vast majority of people.

So, you can see why there is a need to find a human component to air travel problems, because that is something one can fix (fire the incompetent people, fine them, whatever), as opposed to all of the other things which must be accepted or rejected entirely.

It is entirely in line with human nature to do this, regardless of its accuracy or effectiveness.

> Airliner safety is insanely good. Just vast seas of competence, but when there’s a super rare failure, the incorrect impression people get is that Boeing (or Airbus) is just full of incompetency. Almost nothing that humans do is held to the same standard. Not spaceflight, not software, not healthcare, and certainly not automotive.

And there's good reasons for that. Spaceflight actually is regulated pretty strictly (partially, because any spaceworthy rocket is effectively a missile), and space pilots and tourists both sign up for such missions fully knowing that they will have a very significant chance of dying one way or another - there simply hasn't been enough human spaceflight activity to work out and understand all the failure modes, unlike with other forms of transportation.

Humans, unlike birds, aren't naturally wired to travel by air... they need to be able to trust their lives to a significantly higher degree to someone else behaving like they should, because unlike in a car they have zero control (or the illusion of control) in an aircraft.

Additionally, the inherent security risk of an airliner is very high: what is a widebody airplane at its core? Hundreds of tons of weight, a decent portion of which is fuel, propelled at near-supersonic speed, and only two people in control of it. Anything goes bonkers and you can get thousands of people killed and injured (see 9/11).

In contrast, cars, even trucks, have way less capability to cause damage simply because they weigh so much less. The only thing that comes close is railways, and hell I don't get what the US is doing there, there's barely any regulation compared to European standards (see the videos I linked at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38725988).

Being better then driving shouldn't be the standart. Specially driving in the US.

Flying isn't safer then trains I would assume.

Flying has the advantage of being seperated from almost everything else. Most accidents happen when there is mixed traffic, specially cars operated by people with minimal training.

https://turbli.com/blog/the-safest-transport-modes-ranked-by...

So much THIS