Boeing sold just three passenger jets in the past month
cnn.com
cnn.com
You've heard about a couple Boeing incidents over the past few months - during which millions and millions of miles where traveled in perfectly safe Boeing aircraft of all ages and models, all over the world.
It's been said over and over, but should be said again - you're vastly more likely to die on your way to the airport than once aboard an aircarft... any aircraft.
Knee-jerk reactions and declarations like this are as foolish as naïve.
There’s also the “vote with your wallet” aspect of it. I don’t like the direction Boeing is moving. Their past safety profile is less relevant to me than their future trajectory.
(Also, I take the train to the airport, and I minimize highway driving precisely because of its high relative risk.)
In fact, several Airbus crashes have been a result of their illogical control system, with two disconnected, additive-input joysticks.
I don't mean this is a disparaging way, but this perspective is naïve and ignorant.
Example please? I’m fairly well read on aviation incidents and I can’t recall a case of an accident being caused by this in particular.
I do agree the Airbus sidestick setup is stupid, and certainly contributed to this incident. But it’s a different order of stupid to Boeing’s recent malfunctions. I don’t think it makes sense to equivocate here.
CBS News aviation and safety expert Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger explained that he believes that the disappearance would have been less likely to have happened if the plane had been a Boeing instead of an Airbus. This is because the control wheels are larger and more obvious.
<https://web.archive.org/web/20130608033135/http://www.cbsnew...>
(More in the previously-linked Wikipedia article.)
But yes, aircraft crashes are rarely if ever the result of a single point of failure. It's always a cascade of failures that leads up to the crash.
That doesn't mean that Boeing now has its QA in order, or that Boeing's current state proves that anyone else is equally bad. It's just whataboutism.
If I have counted correctly, Airbus appears to be involved in a total of 11. Boeing appears to total 30.
A number of these listings do not involve equipment that was provided or supported by the airframe manufacturer.
This is a chart of incidents, but it doesn't define what an incident is (did anyone get hurt? how many people were hurt? how badly? was it a near-miss, or did the many layers of redundancy in safety handle it fine?), and it doesn't normalize it to incident/flight or incident/mile.
Does Malaysia Airlines having one airplane shot down by the Russians, and another sent into the drink by a pilot-mass-murder-suicide count as an incident? Are either of them Boeing's fault? Are anti-SAM missile defenses supposed to be a standard feature on commercial airliners?
The MAX crashes obviously were, and the MAX has a very bad safety record as a result.
The claim (Boeing is worse than Airbus) is probably correct, but that chart is horrible evidence for it, or for how much worse one is, compared to the other. If you're going to provide evidence for this claim, you need to find something better.
> Does Malaysia Airlines having one airplane shot down by the Russians, and another sent into the drink by a pilot-mass-murder-suicide count as an incident? Are either of them Boeing's fault? Are anti-SAM missile defenses supposed to be a standard feature on commercial airliners?
You're making the mistake of assuming Boeing's fault is what matters. If, for whatever reason, Boeing's planes are more likely to be shot down - regardless of whether or not they are at fault - they are still more dangerous. We are not at the why stage yet, we are at the what stage.
Anyway, since then I've found better data that actually implies Boeing is safer than Airbus.
> Boeing aircraft have a lower frequency of crashes per million flights compared to Airbus, with Boeing having a rate of one crash per 184 million flights and Airbus having a rate of one crash per 081 million flights.
https://www.mightytravels.com/2024/04/comparing-airline-inci...
I've also found a better breakdown comparing the events between the plane manufacturers from my initial graph.
https://statwonk.com/are-boeing-planes-more-dangerous-than-a...
No reasonable person would conclude that.
You either need enough data for it to be statistically significant (Which, given the sample size of one isn't it...)
Or you can work around the lack of statistics, by having a bullet-proof explanation for why Boeings (N=1) get shot down more frequently than Aribuses (N=0). But the bar for that is much higher than 'Well, statistically speaking..."
Statistics are great, because they are a lossy shortcut inform our decisionmaking when we don't actually understand the root causes. But they require statistically significant data to do so. In the absence of it, we have to actually understand the root causes.
I guess this wasn't clear, but I thought this was implied. When I said it's "more likely" I meant you can quantify it. You are correct of course.
Also I agree with everything else you're saying in principle. I kinda feel like we just started the conversation with a misunderstanding about shared assumptions and likely agree with each other.
An incident is anything abnormal, including low tire pressure or bird strike.
The graph uses data from NTSB, a US agency - and the graph shows US data. In the US, vastly more Boeing aircraft are in the skies than Airbus. The graphics is effectively click-bait BS.
This is true so long as you define “a couple” to mean “any number”
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/20/1239132703/boeing-timeline-73...
Boeing just pled guilty to criminal charges yesterday stemming from two crashes.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/08/business/boeing-doj-criminal-...
And there have been several whistleblowers talking about problems in production recently.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/17/business/boeing-whistleblower...
It seems like your position is “I simply do not care about these things, personally” and anything else is foolish and naive
Failure to understand this psichological effect and just using naked statistics is naive too.
For many people this is true. For me it is not.
I drive one of the safest cars ever created (45,000 sold, zero occupant deaths so far in both the US and EU) in an area that, in the United States, has the lowest traffic fatalities per capita and per 100 million miles driven, and I am in a demographic group that makes me, "StAtIsTiCaLlY" the safest driver on the road. I've also received defensive driving training through a former job, held a CDL for over a decade (which makes me even safer than a regular driver), and have no health issues.
My local airport is served, mainly, by the 737NG and MAX. The MAX has a fatal hull loss rate of 1.48 per million departures, or 0.06 per 40,000.
I have made over 40,000 "departures" in my car and have a confirmed, irrefutable, unquestionable fatal hull loss rate of 0.00 per 40,000.
You cannot use miles flown or driven as a comparison because of the nature of airline incidents, which tend (90%+) to occur on takeoff or landing.
If you're worried about your safety, isn't the safety data what you should base your decisions off of?
It's your life, do what you want with it and I'll do the same with mine. Im aware that it may not be a rational decision, but a rational decision should be based on trust and trust is long gone. And there's an alternative, why risk it?
You're conflating two issues here. Yes, air travel is safer than any other means of travel. But comparing apples to apples (Boeing vs Airbus), Boeing has twice as many incidents per 100k flights than Airbus. It's not unreasonable to prefer one to the other, however safe they both might be in the grand scheme of things.
No thank you! The planes do things that Boing didn't tell the pilots about. That's not confidence instilling! Juan Brown of the Blancolerio youtube channel has mentioned that on at least two different occasions - and as a professional pilot was pretty miffed at basically being mislead by Boeing.
What we are seeing in Boeing are not just one-off lapses, but systemic failures in judgement and processes. Software processes, manufacturing processes, test and validation processes. There is serious rot at Boeing and until they get back to an engineering focus I won't be flying on any of their newer stuff - period!
In case you failed the understand, it is also about what we feel, I feel a GIANT negativity towards Sony because the shit they pulled to me and others so no mather what some apologists would try to spin things bringing math or other correct sounding logic I will not do business with assholes if I have an alternative, even if I pay a few cents more.
a) Until Boeing's backlog is drawn down to where a 737 could be delivered years before an A320, which would be to Boeing's advantage, or...
b) Airbus manages to make A220 production faster, more profitable, and they make a stretch variant, which could make the 737 obsolete.
This is the dark horse. The A220 is a strictly superior aircraft to the 737-8/9 for its segment, and Boeing has nothing to match it, because they spent the last decade retrofitting a 60 year old airframe rather than building a new plane. Turns out innovation is important for companies who produce high technology.
Boeing delivered 14 brand new jets in the previous month - 3 737 Maxes and 11 777 Freighters
This is a better article - https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/boeing-de...
This is also why being on track to make 50+ 737s per month is the incentive that dominates, not quality.
Both Reuters and CNN are reporting about the same press release.