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Comment by jmward01 | Hacker News Reader

That is a big statement. Since 2019 there have been 32 fatalities connected to commercial aircraft. Most of those were iv very small aircraft like seaplanes and helicopters. 32 deaths in 4 years compared to ~40k/year in cars. We need to keep things in perspective.

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Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, a MAX, crashed in 2019, killing 157 people.

I forgot to say 'in the united states'. Thanks for the correction. The car statistics would go up massively if they were worldwide and getting those is harder (and less accurate) than in the US alone. Additionally, the regulatory framework for aviation isn't the same everywhere so it is a bit apples to oranges to compare outside the US although it is clear that the issues leading to the two MAX crashes were design and training in nature and directly point back at Boeing as a root cause.

There's a big difference between an unsafe airframe and pilot error/poor-training though.

For example the recent crash in Japan. Airbus isn't getting railed for that one.

I know several 737 pilots on US flag carriers. Even at the time they were saying that neither crash would be possible for their fleet as they had done simulator training of exactly those sorts of scenarios.

From wikipedia: While defending the pilots' actions, Sullenberger was also highly critical of allowing someone with only 200 hours of flight experience to be first officer.

I hate sounding like a Boeing apologist, but I do think it's worth being very clear about where blame lies for things so that we can both asses risk accurately and make appropriate corrections.

The was no pilot error or equipment malfunction in that incident. (I suppose you could look at the pilot of the dash 8 and wonder why he didn't hold short, but he could have been driving a golf cart and still made an runway incursion.) It didn't even happen in the air.

Boeing was rightly blamed for misleading everyone about the nature of the MAX8. It is a materially different airframe, and it required different systems to be created to be competently flyable with 737 type rating. Is Boeing misleading anyone here on the MAX9? Personally, I doubt it. It was probably a fluke non-conforming part, since that plug is a carryover from other 737s. The track record leaves a lot of us wondering if something's up, though.

> Boeing was rightly blamed for misleading everyone about the nature of the MAX8

Pilots I am personally friends with who fly for American, Southwest, and United, disagree. They feel they were fully prepped for the differences in the airframe from their first flight on it, pre-crashes, and have said that they blame the carriers that crashed for not prepping their pilots the same.

It's entirely possible that I missed some news, but I'm unfamiliar with the FAA or anyone else actually accusing Boeing of intentionally misleading or releasing incorrect information?

My analogy to to Japan, while poor, was just meant to illustrate that we should be very clear about the true causes of things. "Boeing lied" is a very different problem than "Boeing squeezed a new system in, advised that pilots should be trained, and airlines didn't perform enough training".

But yes, I agree that we should be wondering what's up, specifically with Boeing's assembly/QA processes...

You missed the whole fiasco. Boeing intentionally deceived everyone involved, from the FAA engineers certifying the MAX to the pilots that were told that they were equipped to fly them.

Boeing noticed that the thing didn't fly like a 737, so they made some software to change its flight characteristics to be more like a 737. They failed to disclose this, and when it "activated" in 2018, a plane crashed. This is when FAA learned about it. Then another one crashed because of the same thing only a few months later.

The DOJ made a criminal complaint against Boeing, resulting in a deferred prosecution agreement and a $2.5 billion penalty. MAX was grounded for years.

> They feel they were fully prepped for the differences in the airframe

Your pilot friends are either wrong or they had inside information and probably should have blown the whistle. Realistically, they probably actually did feel prepared. This is the crux of the criminal fraud action.

> For example the recent crash in Japan. Airbus isn't getting railed for that.

What a bizarre comment to make. Why on earth would Airbus get railed for what happened in Japan?

My point is that Boeing will take the flak for what is arguably a pilot error situation with the MAX crashes.

We should be very careful to distinguish between actual airframe issues and issues that are related to politics and poor decision making or training.

There's nothing we know of that is fundamentally unsound about the 737 MAX airframe, there are mistakes that have been made in very small subset of the airframes/flights operating, and yet everyone is running around like you're taking your life into your hands every time one flies over your head.

> My point is that Boeing will take the flak for what is arguably a pilot error situation with the MAX crashes

It's hard to say if you're trolling or just very misinformed. Boeing was hiding the fact that MAX had additional system to correct the pitch from the pilots.

To keep things in perspective we should compare fatalities per person trips or person miles. Total deaths doesn't mean as much when a lot more people travel by car.

We do, and there has been one death due to an incident on a major U.S. airline since November 2001.

You can maybe argue two, where a woman was killed after exiting an Asiana plane after it crashed at SFO. She was hit by an emergency vehicle responding to the scene.

Asiana is not in the set of "major US airlines".

Separately, major US airlines can reliably fly a daytime visual approach with a fully working airplane into a major airport.

eh. To a certain extent you should compare based on distance traveled, maybe. But total miles driven in the USA are quite high compared to other countries. Lots of driving simply doesn't need to happen, but occurs because we induce it by the way we design the places where we build.

I don't really care how safe driving is per mile, I care if I'm going to be dead at the end of the year.

Though I agree flying is extremely safe, keep in mind that of those 4 years, two of them were while the 737 MAX was grounded, and much of it was while air travel was much lower due to COVID.

People spend so much more time inside cars than inside airplanes every year, that such a comparison seems disingenuous. You should normalize the deaths by time travelled.

Literally any way you slice it, flying a major airline in the U.S. is safer than any other form of transportation, including walking.

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