331–340 of 368 posts
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19393741 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19393715 for more.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What was the result of the litigation? From a money perspective, it seemed like "admitting fault" would be far more reasonable, and I think in this sense executives tend to exaggerate effects of "admitting fault", because, in the end, they are betting that legal proceedings would nullify its effects, but as we are learning now, it's not the case at all. Public memory might be short, but it regenerates at alarming spe…
They might have not been contractually allowed to admit fault. Many insurance policies do not allow the insured to admit fault, or they forfeit the policy.
Often in-flight recordings are included. Some of which are quite frightening.
Here's the one on the Rudder issue mentioned in the post: https://youtu.be/ochby0LiGfM
Wow. The quote from Capt Ray Miller is particularly telling: “I have been told by my company . . . that the FAA and Boeing (were) aware of the problems with the spurious rudder inputs but considered them to be more of a nuisance problem than a flight safety issue. I was informed, that so far as everyone was concerned, the rudder hardovers were a problem but that the `industry' felt the losses would be in the acceptab…
A side note: there is a well-defined value of "acceptable range", i.e. regulators regularly make decisions based on whether the cost of a change would be more than the "statistical value of a human life". ( https://www.theglobalist.com/the-cost-of-a-human-life-statis... ) The question is whether, through regulatory capture or negligence, monetary costs are being valued too highly.
> A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one. -…
What is the alternative to a cost benefit analysis though? We could spend an infinite amount on diminishing safety gains.
Here's an altruistic way to do a cost/benefit analysis. Optimize for safety. Consider money as a means to an end. If the airplane is prohibitively expensive or your company goes bankrupt, people will use some other (presumably less safe) form of transportation instead. You have to limit price. You might be able to pay for a recall yourself once in a while, but you have to sell products at a profit on average, take subsidies, or close shop. So no, you can't spend an infinite amount on diminishing safety gains.
Okay, altruism is too much to expect from a for-profit company, but we should expect better than total short-sighted greed/psychopathy. Maybe we should expect (by "expect" I mean "require/demand", not "naively assume") enlightened self-interest and long-term thinking?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In 1996 TWA 800, a 747 flight, exploded[1]. The cause was lack of fuel tank inerting. The FAA subsequently published a rule in 2007[2] saying that by December 26th, 2017 all passenger airliners needed to have an inerting system by manufacture or retrofitting. UA and Delta[3][4] flew such variants of the 747 to within a month of the FAA deadline. The final flight was on November 7, 2017. You can still fly the 747 into…
> The point being that airlines can and will fly airframes that in one way or another would be illegal to manufacture today for safety reasons Of course, this is also true for cars. The vast majority of cars on the road would be illegal to manufacture today.
Source?
Illegal to manufacture due to lacking significant safety features, or due to other changes over time such as evolving emissions standards?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A side note: there is a well-defined value of "acceptable range", i.e. regulators regularly make decisions based on whether the cost of a change would be more than the "statistical value of a human life". ( https://www.theglobalist.com/the-cost-of-a-human-life-statis... ) The question is whether, through regulatory capture or negligence, monetary costs are being valued too highly.
Yes I have also seen Fight Club
To add a human element to this story, I'm from north of Pittsburgh and the crash of flight 427 is one of the events from my childhood that I can determinedly recall. One of my classmates--eight or nine years old--lost her father in that crash. Our class planted a tree outside our middle school with a plaque to memorialize him. I bother saying this only because, while air travel is impressively safe overall (hats off…
Also from Pittsburgh, and my wife lost her dad in this crash. The top comment on this thread (re: "acceptable loss"), is infuriating.
Do you ever drive a car? Do you think the risk is "acceptable"?
And don't get hung up on semantics, "acceptable" doesn't mean it's not terrible, it means that it's not feasible to prevent every risk with that danger:cost ratio. Especially because anything that causes a drastic reduction in flight will increase car trips and probably cause more deaths.
This is of course different from someone lying about the level of risk. But some risks really are "acceptable".