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Comment by LASR | Hacker News Reader

I’m about to fly on a Max-8 airplane in the next 2 hours. I can’t help but be very nervous about the fact that we are still unclear on what exactly happened.

This feels very much like the MCAS situation. They spun their wheels for months after the initial crash. And another tragic crashed happened due to the same issue.

Come on. Someone somewhere at Boeing knows exactly what happened. Even if they don’t want to reveal this, it’s not even clear to me if they now have better QC procedures to catch these kinds of issues.

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> I can’t help but be very nervous about the fact that we are still unclear on what exactly happened.

It seems pretty clear from their initial report (which largely corroborates the whistleblower a few months ago), no?

The bolts were not reinstalled after they were removed to perform a QA fix.

If you mean beyond that, why weren't the bolts reinstalled, nothing too shocking there. The system of record between Boeing and their subcontractors, as well as their procedures to pass off work between companies and crews, is not sufficient to prevent lapses in workmanship like this.

The good news is, all of these door plug bolts are confirmed to be properly installed ;) They just grounded them all to do that. Now...what _other_ bolts are missing, well that's anybody's guess.

Kayak.com gives you the option to sort and filter plane types! It's now one of their most popular features. Lots of people are happy to filter out 737-MAX planes and pay more for other flights.

The problem is that your ticket does not guarantee a plane model so it can change at any moment

But it allows Kayak to increase sales, playing of peoples fears.

Or, it allows consumers to make better informed decisions?

The United app and website also show equipment type under the "details" expansion. You can also filter searches by equipment type. Yes, it can change but it's correct the vast majority of the time.

god forbid Boeing sees a market reaction that is tied to consumers rather than investors when their shoddy worksmanship fails in a catastrophic manner, right?

How does it affect Boeing? I suppose in terms of service contracts and the like, but haven't the airlines bought the planes already?

It doesn't affect Boeing at all. Both, Airbus and Boeing are booked out for years to come. Airlines are buying those olanes, and quite frankly, passanger opinion doesn't factor into that much, if at all.

It helps Kayak so, more people booking there by selecting a certain model. And the airlines, they can easily price tickets for non-737 MAX flights higher now (they propably don't, but why not?). In the end, it is pointless: planes get swapped out all the time, so there is no guarantee dor the model to be correct. Unless you fly with an airline that has no MAX's in their fleet. In which case this whole Kayak thing is on the same level like vegan vegetables or lactose-free cheese.

Yes, but a lot of 737 Maxs are still on order, and if nobody wants to fly in those anymore, airlines will cancel those orders. Boeing still hopes to continue selling these planes, because it's apparently a very lucrative market segment.

There isba deep misunderstanding how aircraft purchases worm. Airlines run the numbers, and as soon as it becomes cheaper to buy a new one the old one gets replaced. Which model they choose depends a lot on their current fleet, switching from A320s to B737s and vice-verca is expensive, takes years and requires significant training of flight and maintenance crews. Only the big ones afford mixed fleets.

Add to that the fact that both, Boeing and Airbus, are fully booked for years to come, and it is pretty clear that the MAX isn't going anywhere as there are simply not enough alternatives to come by. Passengers aren't the ones deciding which planes are bought, airlines and leasing companies are.

There isba quite cynic name for passeneger: self-loading freight, also real freight doesn't complain.

I don't see anyone here misunderstanding any of that. But if passengers refuse to fly Boeing, that changes the numbers quite drastically. And empty fleet is not making money. Switching is expensive, but so is not flying at all, or being forced to fly at reduced rates. If flying with airlines using Airbus is more popular than flying with airlines using Boeing, Airbus airlines will be more profitable, and Boeing airlines will buy less planes. They won't be buying any planes if they go bankrupt.

"Passenger demand doesn't matter" is simply not true. Its effect is indirect, slowed, insulated, but it's still there. At least if sellers like Kayak enable differentiation by plane type.

Airlines are typically repeat buyers of airplanes. If customers avoid Boeing planes enough to hurt business that will affect future purchasing decisions.

Maybe I want to fly a specific model because it is more comfortable than the alternatives. Would I rather fly in a cramped 737 to Hawaii or a wide body airbus? Makes a difference to my comfort!

Yes, but they have to compensate you if less than 72 hours change, and you can decline and get a refund.

Under what set of regulations? I only book flights on Airbus planes these days, but would like an extra insurance policy against switching in a Boeing.

Who does, Kayak? The airline? I don't know about Kayak but that's not a thing with any airline contract of carriage that I'm aware of. In fact a lot of airlines explicitly say that their ticket does not guarantee particular equipment, seats, etc. Just that the airline will get you from the origin to the destination(s) in the cabin class you paid for.

I know what you mean. I had a flight recently and didn't look at the plane before I booked it. Then woke up that night, "Shit, is it a Max-8?"

If it makes you feel any better, as with all commercial airplanes, even a Max-8 is far safer than driving your car to get groceries.

* Just saw that your comment is 2 hours old and you said your flight is in 2 hours. Hope you're enjoying your flight! See you when you land!

737 is not a plane which can be enjoyed to fly. More like a fully booked intercity bus. Especially Ryanair is cheap on everything.

Comparing the safety of x to driving should be an official fallacy on par with Godwin's Law at this point (which in turn is no longer as firm as it once was). Driving is by far the most dangerous activity that most of us undertake on a regular basis, and is the leading cause of death in Canada among people aged 5-25, and remains in the top three until age 40 (after self-harm and drug use).[1] Switching your commute from a car to a bike or public transit will extend your lifespan, not because it's healthier, but because you're less likely to be killed by another car.

1: https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/mortality-and-globa...

What makes it a fallacy? Statistically speaking, being ok with driving but being scared of going on an airplane, any airplane, makes absolutely no sense

But it makes perfect sense, because in many car fatalities there were numerous things the dead person could have done better like not drink, brake sooner, not speed, etc that would have spared them.

In almost all plane fatalities the only dead people who had a chance of doing something better were the pilots. The passengers were doomed from the start.

Even good drivers die in cars

Sure, but you can tell yourself that it won't happen to you, and you might be somewhat right, even.

The fallacy is contending that something is safe by comparing it favourably to an extremely unsafe activity. The takeaway of "you are more likely to die on the drive to the airport" should be "cars are dangerous" not "planes are safe". Planes are ~safe (save evidently for those made by Boeing post-2000), but why not say that the annual global death toll due to plane crashes (~500/yr) is comparable to that of hippopotamuses? Automobiles kill 1.2 million people per year.

Statistically speaking, being comfortable with driving makes no sense.

I mean that kind of makes it the opposite of a fallacy.

I guess I don't see the comparison the same way you do.

You frame it as comparing something dangerous to something safe.

I see it as something you would be willing to do without fear, to something even safer than that.

I don't disagree that driving is dangerous, but most people are willing to accept that danger.

I’m pretty skeptical that switching a car commute to a bike commute increases safety.

Anecdotally I have seen a lot more bad bike accidents than car accidents, despite the number of bikes being much, much lower. This makes sense, since you are much more exposed when on a bicycle and while you are moving slower the cars aren’t.

If the stats do say this (I assume you have indeed read that somewhere), I suspect there is some large selection bias at play. Like, people with a safe bike route available are more likely to bike, which skews the numbers towards safe even though I imagine switching any random car commute to biking on the road would make it more dangerous on average.

Public transit of course makes sense, and I do wish biking in urban areas was safer since I don’t do it now because it’s dangerous and it would be great to be able to do it safely.

I think the proper way to compare bike and car fatalities is to compare deaths per mile traveled or, as this article does in a charming way, deaths per hour.

https://chessintheair.com/the-risk-of-dying-doing-what-we-lo...

No definitely not, when we are talking about “Switching your commute from a car to a bike or public transit will extend your lifespan”.

If bike vs car choice is confounded by route safety, deaths per distance or time does not tell you anything useful about whether switching will make you safer.

The issue with that table is that it's comparing apples to oranges. It compares general travel to the most dangerous part of a dangerous activity, like the final push for the summit of mount Everest. It compares activities that take a few minutes and are done for fun to activities that take hours every day and people to do get to work. It's not like I'm going to hang-glide to work.

It's of cause worth noting in comparing cars to bicycles that cars are the number one cause of bicyclist and pedestrian fatalities, so fewer cars will lead to fever cyclist dying.

Railways and busses are a lot closer to airplanes in statistics then cars https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics... so going car less is probably the single biggest improvement we can make to transportation safety.

> Come on. Someone somewhere at Boeing knows exactly what happened.

I don't think that's true for any of the issues, or airline accidents in general. Remember ultimately we're still talking about very rare events that almost always involve a number of different factors lining up in just the right way.

Even the MAX crashes were 2 out of how many thousands of MCAS equipped flights with no issues and those crashes also required other things to go wrong. It's easy to say MCAS was the obvious cause in retrospect, but it's much less clear it should have been easy to predict that outcome before any investigations were done regardless of how much inside knowledge one had.

This is not at all to excuse the causes, but there is a reason crash investigations take time. Demanding immediate explanations is just asking for wrong conclusions to be reached in the name of expediency. In fact taking the time to fully investigate probably produces better accountability in the long run because it can uncover more subtle but serious problems.

Along with the very low actual incident rate, grandparent comment also suggests a certain degree of functional organizational coherence which is often wildly missing at large organizations

If you ask 50 people at Boeing what happened, you may receive 50 very different answers

To clarify: I too am not excusing Boeing and think they’re likely a hot trash mess that deserves to have C-levels lose their heads with no golden parachute (or maybe their punishment should be a Boeing-produced parachute)

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