Maybe what most people are truly concerned is the Boeing Narrative?

Increasingly more than just a narrative

Could you link a few with injuries anywhere near this size? I feel like that’d be national news, so it’s surprising to hear it’s happening often.

Multiple whistleblowers have been raising concerns about Boeing safety and build quality issues for several years, so for you to say "so what, there have been issues on Boeing planes for several years" actually reinforces the "Boeing narrative". If there are multiple people on the inside raising alarm bells, there probably is some substance there. Finally the problems are getting big enough that they can't just be swept under the rug anymore.

> Flight control incidents that cause injuries are not hard to find on avherald.

Exactly. But the takeaway here is that "notable" and "newsworthy" are slightly different ideas, and the latter is more subjective.

This is absolutely the effect of the "Boeing Narrative". If the media is faced with data like this[2] in the face of a frame that says "Aviation is extremely safe and getting safer every year", they'll likely skip over the outliers. If they need to sell articles into a market that knows "Boeing Planes are Unsafe", they're going to have a much harder time with that notability analysis.

And that's 100% on Boeing, not the media. At the end of the day if your business depends on people believing your products are good products[1], cutting corners on the reality undergirding that perception is a disaster. Boeing had almost a full century of goodwill they've now flushed.

[1] Which is true for almost every business where the consumer sees the competition. Maybe not if you manufacture gaskets or capacitors, but airplanes and laptops for sure.

[2] Editted to add: it also hands out an easy scapegoat. We really don't know if there was an instrument failure here or if it was pilot culpability. We just know what the pilot said. And we have to recognize that the pilot might have lied knowing that Boeing made an easier target.

Especially given that the Bayesian numbers are that most incidents (especially long haul) will happen on Boeing frames purely because Boeing is everywhere.

> Flight control incidents that cause injuries are not hard to find on avherald.

No they're not. Flight control issues happen, turbulence happens, flight control issues that cause injuries are quite rare.

If you want to be a contrarian after a whistleblower is dead and 50 people were injured, maybe you should have some real data, stats or information instead of just saying "it happens all the time".

Perfectly good diesel engines and the carbon dioxide they saved with these cars. Madness, pure madness. Should have just ignored the scandal to protect the local car industry..

Worse, we’re only given a passenger’s recollection of what a pilot said. Which is of basically zero value.

I’m reminded of another thread on this site a few months back. One commenter talked about an incident where their flight circled in a holding pattern unable to land for whatever reason. The pilot got on the PA and informed the passengers that they might have to divert as they about 30 minutes of fuel. Around half an hour later, the plane made a desperate run for a nearby airport.

As the story was told, all the flight attendants were white as ghosts. The plane’s engines ran out of gas and shut off, but to the commenter’s existential relief they managed to just make it to the runway.

Of course this is ridiculous. The pilot’s announcement was either grossly misunderstood or very poorly chosen. The plane had plenty of fuel, they had thirty minutes before they would be forced to divert, not thirty minutes total. No cockpit crew with functioning self-preservation instincts would patiently circle around a pattern while their plane inevitably runs out of gas. The engines didn’t run out of fuel; they were brought to idle or low for the descent just like every other landing.

If the plane had truly run out of fuel, the cabin crew would have had the passengers brace for landing. There would have been emergency crews with flashing lights all along parallel taxiways. The plane would have come to a halt on the runway and been unable to taxi. An NTSB report would have been filed. The news would have reported on it.

People replied pointing all of this out, but to my (probably faulty, after all, I’m an eyewitness) recollection they remained steadfast in their telling of events.

And very timely, 737 Gear just published a video discussing Tucker Carlson’s retelling of an incident where his plane crashed[1]. By Tucker’s telling, there was an explosion and the wing broke off mid-flight. The plane crashed into the sand. In reality, the plane’s landing gear collapsed during landing. The plane rolled off the runway.

In short, a passenger’s recall of stressful events is generally worse than useless.

[1] https://youtu.be/dG-gXIY-GtA