2023 was one of the safest years in commercial aviation
askthepilot.com
askthepilot.com
I think the worry people have is that safety standards are slipping, when it comes to building airplanes, specifically Boeing building airplanes. This is not something that would be noticeable in an accident statistic while it is actually happening, yet it is an extremely serious matter for the safety of aviation in the future.
To be fair to the author, this is very much mentioned.
And yes, luck has played a role as well. We closed out 2023 with a near-perfect record, but not without a few close calls.
Credit is mostly due to the government here. The NTSB[1] has been a shining success.
And yes, hysteresis must be considered for transport safety.
One would think there is a slightly more risk of a major disaster for flights where the door plugs haven't been properly attached, compared to others. But I guess you've looked into the numbers in order to make the strong claims you make in your comment.
> can be right now so please stop panicking.
Just because people write about this whole thing doesn't mean people are panicking, so please stop trying to stop people from doing something they probably aren't even doing in the first place.
The door issue revealed severe quality control issues at Boeing.
How much is Boeing paying you to post this crap?
Boeing's MCAS fraud caused two complete losses within a few months. The carnage only stopped when regulators forcibly grounded all 737 Max globally while Boeing continued to deny any issues with the airplane design and blamed the pilots.
If someone was sitting next to that window they would have been sucked out and killed.
The airplane safety record is relatively good DESPITE the criminals running the show at Boeing who are actively against safety.
So, effectively the same level of critical argumentation as a Boeing shill.
Actually, your ideological point is really that "Boeing does some things right, let's learn from them" which is fine but doesn't let Boeing off the hook.
No. This is a major issue, because it demonstrates that the safety protections which have been built into the industry can actually fail on such a basic level. There has been an enormous amount of work to try to make sure that Airplanes never miss critical components of their structure. Failing to install a bolt isn't one mistake it is dozens of mistakes which need to have happened and which show that the overall mistake rate has to be high.
If the door at failed at a different point, if the seating had been different, then there would have been deaths.
Making sure bolts are installed is the most basic of basic things. If that can fail, many, many far more complex and involved problems are also failing. If you understand how safety in aviation works you would understand that this slipping through can only happen if many, many more things are also slipping through. Things which are far harder to inspect and to verify to assure flight safety.
Rapid cabin depressurization is in fact a major issue for obvious reasons. The fact that no one died was a matter of luck (not at a super high altitude yet, no one sitting directly next to the door, seatbelt light still on, etc.)
The fact that airlines found many loose/missing bolts on doors in other 737s indicates that Boeing has a QC problem that could lead to future accidents. Systemic QC problems at a major plane manufacturer with aircraft components that are essential to maintaining pressurization is a major issue. The FAA is certainly treating it as such.
Meanwhile, people are afraid that the manufacturer standards which have been very high since the 80s are starting to slip, with very new planes having problems.
And to fixating at door issue... isn't MCAS debacle still relatively new?
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Air_Flight_610
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_302
as OP said:
> I think the worry people have is that safety standards are slipping, when it comes to building airplanes, specifically Boeing building airplanes. This is not something that would be noticeable in an accident statistic while it is actually happening, yet it is an extremely serious matter for the safety of aviation in the future.
That is a very condescending reponse. Auditing the procedures and documenting the problems is not panicking. Such methodical analysis is largely the opposite of panicking.
You are looking at a very superficial trailing indicator, the number of accidents.
While that's an important consideration, it is not very useful in terms of predicting future events.
Given that we now know that procedures are not being followed and records are not being kept, this tells us that the quality standards have slipped abysmally. That does not result in more accidents in the short term, but largely guarantees them in the longer term.
Boeing is equivalent to a software company with a great track record of not having security vulnerabilities who decides to get rid of the entire security team since nothing is happening and then patting themselves on the back quarter after quarter for all the money they save. Of course, we know the quality will be slipping and slipping and by the time the first vulnerability is exploited a few years later the codebase will be so riddled with holes that there might be no way to recover.
Culture problems have a tendency of not showing themselves until things are extremely dire.
> Combining jet and turboprop operations, IATA says there were 37 million commercial flights last year. Among those, the only deadly crash was that of an ATR turboprop in Nepal last January.
Someone both died and didn't die?
> the only deadly crash was that of an ATR turboprop
Turboprops are not jets.
Although if I remember correctly, didn’t the pilot become a pilot herself after she lost her husband, a pilot, in a crash 10 years prior?
(Edit: it was 16 years rather than 10 [1]. I’d forgotten how tragic the whole situation was, and how sympathetic everybody involved.)
[0] [PDF] https://www.tourism.gov.np/files/1/9N-ANC%20FINAL%20Report.p...
At the same time, the incidents last year are not excusable. This is all the noise about, the quality control problems are inexcusable and having a safe year does not do anything to save face.
The same thing happened with vaccines to a large degree, right? A generation grows up without measles, and then they think maybe vaccinating against measles isn't really that important. After all, they never knew anybody who got it, how bad could it be?
Successful public health and aviation both require both deep engineering & science, strong top-down policies and enforcement, and robust & knowledgeable on-the-ground personnel.
And of course a public bought-into all of this.
The closest I can think of-prior and surely because I’m a poor student of history—goes back to Roman aqueducts and roads, where so many things had to go right and maintained.
Technological advances also increase complexity which can increase risk in unforeseen ways. Here is a perfect example where a single action within a 180 millisecond window was almost enough to crash a plane [0].
Could software be made to handle it even better? Absolutely. But it's not a software error per se that caused this.
> the video even emphasises that it is not banned in Europe
No, what's strictly not demanded by EASA is that the manufacturers enable safe application of go-around thrust even if reversers have been deployed. Airbus implemented this nevertheless, but that was only tested with both wheels on the ground.
Quick edit: But also the article is talking specifically about deaths, and as far as I recall no one died with the Boeing incidents. Granted the door plug one was probably pure luck (no one was sitting next to it).
- January 13, China Southern Airlines returned the MAX to service (i.e. still grounded for a small part of 2023)
- In April of 2023, it was revealed that US engineers had recommended grounding 737 Max immediately following the Ethiopian Airlines accident.
- December 28, the FAA revealed that Boeing had asked airlines to check newer 737 MAX aircraft for a possible loose screw in the rudder control system. The FAA wants to "closely monitor" the targeted inspections and consider additional measures if further loose or missing components are discovered.
> Two years later, hundreds of Max planes were grounded worldwide after the crashes in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people.
Despite being a criminally negligent organization, Boeing still failed to kill anyone because of the FAA (their direct action and also airlines' fear of consequences).
> Despite being a criminally negligent organization, Boeing still failed to kill anyone because of the FAA
Adopting the assumptions of the original comment, Boeing have managed to kill people despite the FAA, although as you point out it wasn’t in 2023.
And you're actually raising a good point here: Only US citizens get to vote on the US federal government, which controls FAA, yet many countries indirectly rely on the FAA as the primary regulator for Boeing, as far as I understand.
Maybe the regulators of a few large industrial nations or the EU have the size/staffing/funding and leverage necessary to make a difference (and that's still a few steps removed from the FAA!). Others (Ethiopa and Indonesia come to mind) are effectively at the mercy of the FAA.
Except for when Boeing is allowed to regulate itself
The FAA can outsource the implementation, but not the responsibility.
By sheer luck. Loosing a door mid flight could have ended very differently.
If you counted whistleblowers sitting in their truck in a hotel parking lot, this number increases to 1.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/186184/passengers-boarde...
Even more so in case of adverse weather or any systems failures. It quickly becomes too much for one pilot, that's why only small jets are certified for single pilot operations.
You can google all the stats you want but in the current environment I don't trust any recent stats. They are at best cherry-picked, like making dubious claims about "deaths in 2023" vs. serious accidents which indicate systemic problems.
They are, almost by definition.
> Many planes were parked for 2 years and suffered unexpected issues as they were rushed back into service with minimal oversight, after many experienced personnel retired.
I haven't heard of any, care to give examples? I did hear of a few runway incursion incidents due to ATC staff shortage and overwork, but these seem to have subsided (though there was a really bad one in Japan just a couple of days into 2024 that killed some people).
> or the spectacular accidents lately with wheels and doors literally falling off of aircraft.
Incidents, not accidents. There is a difference.
> You can google all the stats you want but in the current environment I don't trust any recent stats. They are at best cherry-picked, like making dubious claims about "deaths in 2023" vs. serious accidents which indicate systemic problems.
How can you not trust a simple stat like number of deaths / number of miles flown? Do you think there were accidents with deaths that were hidden?
Not to say that there aren't reasons to worry about the slippages at Boeing, though. They betray a negligent eating into the safety margins the industry has built into design and operation of aircraft. The point is that last year, these margins held.
They're not my anecdotes. They are things that made international news due to being so scandalous. One blogger pulls uncited stats out his ass and now I have to fight in the comment section to get people to admit the obvious.
>I haven't heard of any, care to give examples?
Sure.
1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/faa-clears-boeing-737-max-fly-a... 2. https://unitedafa.org/news/2021/5/4/airlines-rush-to-put-par... 3. https://news.delta.com/how-delta-people-are-awakening-over-5... 4. https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/08/business/boeing-safety-qualit... 5. https://fortune.com/2024/03/08/boeing-united-airlines-runs-o... 6. https://fortune.com/2023/06/01/retirement-surge-worker-gap-a...
So you see, there is a clear pattern here. If you're waiting for these people to incriminate themselves, you're going to be waiting a long time. But they can't hide accidents for long because everyone cares about having safe planes, and every single one of these incidents has hundreds of witnesses.
>How can you not trust a simple stat like number of deaths / number of miles flown? Do you think there were accidents with deaths that were hidden?
I think I already explained it. Airplane crashes are very rare, so I believe the numbers can vary dramatically year by year. Planes are very variable in capacity, so the number of flights and deaths is also highly variable. I can't say for sure whether the number is reliable, but even if it is I think being fixated on that number is a bad idea. All the negligence and personnel issues are putting people in grave danger.
>Incidents, not accidents. There is a difference.
Yes this is true. Accident implies nobody is at fault, or this stuff is excusable. It really isn't, because it's negligence at multiple levels. On the bright side, that is easier to fix than defective plane designs.
I find the presence of this article to be inorganic. Why is this dude trying to convince us that air travel is safer, when everyone can see that it isn't because of the sheer number of ridiculous failures? That's the hilarious nature of the world we live in. People committed to lying for a living put themselves in the position of having to say amusingly wrong shit all the time. I expect to eventually see a reporter telling us that planes are safe as a plane crashes in the background behind him. It would fit the 2020s perfectly.
"Incident" vs "Accident" in Aviation have very specific meaning (see https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/830.2 for example). Simply put, an accident is an event where there is any of: death, serious injury, or substantial damage to the aircraft, and an incident is an event relating to the safety of operations regardless of whether or not death, injury, or substantial damage to the aircraft occurred. Neither have anything to do with whether there is fault or whether they are excusable.
Regardless of the recent incidents, air travel remains exceedingly safe when compared with other modes of transport, and comments such as these make me wonder what I'm missing.
Again, I'm not excusing these Boeing issues -- they are very serious. However calling a simple (number of deaths/total flight hours) calculations that are trivially verified as "uncited stats" is extremely hysterical to the point where you cannot be taken seriously at all.
In your defense, I'm sure the general trend over like 30 years is that air travel has gotten safer, probably because of increased use of autopilot and other software, and general equipment advances. However, that does not disprove the fact that there is a recent spate of ridiculous failures that probably haven't even made it to statistics yet. Shall we overlook a dramatic increase in embarrassing incidents because the larger trend is downward? I don't think so.
I do appreciate the clarification about an industry definition of incident vs. accident. By your own definition, incidents and accidents appear to be on the rise. If you believe every stat that the government comes up with, I have a bridge to sell you. When they don't like a number, they redefine it and keep calling it by the same name. Just like CPI, unemployment, GDP, etc. Or average temperatures. We do need stats but you have to think critically about where they come from and who would be blamed if they were bad.
There’s a ton of reliable published stats and there’s nothing dubious about them.