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Comment by LaGrange | Hacker News Reader

This is a great article, with one exception:

There have been a handful involving regional affiliates, but the majors have been virtually accident-free

Now, I realize that even including those the stats are still fairly good, but it makes the "virtually accident-free" stats of majors a result of spinning off risk to affiliates, which is not something a consumer should care about. It might be a bit of a nit-pick (as it's still a handful), but moving things into different brands to avoid stigma is a common and, in my opinion, unhealthy practice.

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And the best comment on the article points out that this is even worse than it appears:

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"I'm sorry, but it's just wrong to say that. Yes, it may have technically been a ComAir flight that crashed in 2006 in Lexington, killing all 50+ people aboard (aside from the first officer), but those people booked a Delta flight, not a ComAir flight, so why make the distinction? And, yes, it may have been a Colgan flight that crashed in Buffalo in 2009, also killing 50 people, but they booked their flight on Continental. Major airlines ferret out their regional connections to these airlines all the time, and you don't know you're on one unless the flight attendant announces it (or you just happen to know about aviation), so why on Earth is this guy making a distinction?

I'm a fairly frequent flyer on USAir (enough for mid-level status) and I can't tell you how often I book a USAir flight but I'm actually flying Republic or Chautauqua. Yes, air travel is safe, but let's not ignore reality just to make a (false) point. There have been recent and very deadly crashes since 2001."

My experience is that the typical online flight booking websites show when a flight is serviced by an affiliate. That's typically a clue that the flight will be on a smaller regional jet.

Every regional flight I have booked through a major airlines has prominently shown both the affiliate airline and the type of aircraft.

I think the point remains though. The average consumer doesn't know the difference between a "major" airline and a "regional" one and shouldn't need to. Their safety record is just as applicable. Its not as if a consumer will see a regional affiliate and change their reservation because of it; its effectively the same experience.

Agreed. Those two flights that crashed were flown as Delta Connections and Continental Connections, and booking a flight on the "majors" to a smaller market could easily book you on one of those flights for a shorter leg. It's not like you can just fly majors only to be safer or anything.

Could it be that rather than a distinction between the big airlines and the small airlines, the author was attempting to make a distinction between flights with large amounts of passengers (100-200+) and flights of smaller size (50ish)?

I think the point is that there was a streak of 12 years with no fatal incidents of a large-size jet.

...in North America, which is just more fact-twisting by the author.

Lets not forget that 228 people perished when the flight crew of Air France 447 flew the plane straight into the ocean.

Well didn't really fly so much as fell out of the sky into the ocean. Absolutely terrifying.

If by "flew" you mean "stalled", then yes.

Well, it wasn't your standard controlled flight into terrain, but since one of the pilots was pulling back on his hand stick for the entire time.... (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Sullenbe...).

Of course, he could have said that instead.

Indeed... In fact, if you asked the passengers of Colgan Air Flight 3407 what airline they were flying, I suspect the vast majority would say 'Continental'

You're right, but it's important that a smaller aircraft implies fewer potential casualties. The best thing would be to rate accidents by the log of the actual number of casualties, but that's not too intuitive.

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