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Comment by ReptileMan | Hacker News Reader

>I haven’t done the math but conceptually it’s like being paranoid about taking plane A that has a 99.99998 safety vs plane B that has a 99.99999 safety.

That is literally twice as dangerous.

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Actually... 737 MAX is roughly 30 times as dangerous as the other planes in its category (eg. A320).

Source: https://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm

Every MAX flying now has had updates made to address the two events captured in those statistics, so those stats capture something different than today’s reality.

They're all being put together by Spirit Aerosystems which is a company that makes zero gross profit and has interest rate payments which are half of its gross revenue on top of that, which was spun off out of Boeing in order to aggressively cut costs and bust unions and fluff up Boeing's stock price.

That hasn't changed at all.

Spirit Aerosystems also does work for Airbus.

"Our business depends largely on sales of components for a single aircraft program, the B737 MAX"

-- Spirit Aerosystems 2022 10-K filing

They do 3 times as much business with Boeing than Airbus.

(Airbus may also wrap Spirit in their own Q/A process to mitigate the issues, which Boeing is certainly lacking)

Also this article just hit the front page today:

https://viewfromthewing.com/boeing-whistleblower-production-...

The worry is that Airbus is ALSO going to be affected by this shitty quality, not that Boeing isn't totally fucked by its outsourcing to Spirit Aerosystems.

Different purchasers can have different expectations of quality and pay the company differently;-)

If you apply this reasoning to the MAX statistics, then you have to apply it to the statistics of all the other planes, too, which also received various changes and updates during their service lives improving their safety and you are back to square one, that is MAX is much less safe than other planes

It is definitely fair to apply that to other planes. e.g the DC10

That's the problem with the reputation and the perception of safety. If you lose it then even if you finally fix the underlying issues people will still have a hard time believing you.

That's why we have regulators who scientifically qualify safety, rather than leaning on public opinion. Public opinion isn't an accurate methodology.

The point is that you will still not win the lottery if you buy two tickets.

It’s because of that type of sentiment that Boeing has been doing what they have been doing.

Until one day you close the bedroom door 5% harder than usual and the whole house collapses.

Exactly, it's not about the marginal increase in risk today, it's about fighting the culture of enshittification the only way you can, with your wallet.

I love this analogy, thanks!

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