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Murder-Suicides by Pilots Are Vexing Airlines as Deaths Mount

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Re: Murder-Suicides by Pilots Are Vexing Airlines as Deaths Mount

#21

Post by vessenes »

It may be that pilot murder-suicides are a terrible problem, but the data in this article does not back this up. The graph of the data they show is an almost textbook-grade ‘evil’ graph.

What the graph shows is that

* all cause flying mortality is way, way down over the last 30 years

* in raw deaths 2011-2020 was way up over prior decade but only slightly up over the one prior to that

* there has been one crash this year that might have been an m-s crash.

The graph doesn’t use the same time scales for the different bar charts, and doesn’t show any useful data like

* percentages against all air travelers or flights (way, way up since the 90s and down during covid)

* unit number of crashes

* that the stats might be ‘0’ this year after all depending on outcome of investigation of a single flight

Given all this and the raw numbers of people (single digit hundreds per decade), it’s also possible that rather than this being an epidemic, there were like 4 crashes in the 1990s, 0 in the 2000s, 3 in the 2010s, and possibly 1 so far in the early 2020s.

Again, terrible, but if this is the situation, then appropriate response might not be mass publicity, especially because stories like this can be memetically viral and help cause the behavior they describe.

Re: Murder-Suicides by Pilots Are Vexing Airlines as Deaths Mount

#22

Post by droopyEyelids »

phkahler wrote: post #12

>> Preliminary evidence suggests the crash of a China Eastern Airlines Corp. jet in March may be the latest such tragedy, a person familiar with the investigation said. What is the preliminary evidence? For this type of conclusion I would think the first and last bit of evidence would be the control inputs as recorded by the black box. Supporting evidence should be on the voice recording. What is this "preliminary ev…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_xupptkcso

This channel is anti-china propaganda, but they do some research and follow the news.

Re: Murder-Suicides by Pilots Are Vexing Airlines as Deaths Mount

#23

Post by CWuestefeld »

phkahler wrote: post #12

>> Preliminary evidence suggests the crash of a China Eastern Airlines Corp. jet in March may be the latest such tragedy, a person familiar with the investigation said. What is the preliminary evidence? For this type of conclusion I would think the first and last bit of evidence would be the control inputs as recorded by the black box. Supporting evidence should be on the voice recording. What is this "preliminary ev…

I don't read Chinese and can't provide you links, so treat this as very anecdotal. But here's what my (Chinese) wife tells me from their news.

It seems the co-pilot was very senior and experienced. But because of the politics of a corporate buyout, he was forever relegated to a supporting role. Job advancement, or even the recognition of his skills, was impossible. He was destined always to be in the right seat. He had complained to management multiple times and given them threats (I'm not sure what the nature of those threats were; likely just to quit?).

This came to a head with the crash of the Chinese real estate markets, where he'd had a lot of investment. Basically he lost everything.

The story - again, third hand at best by now - is that he left a note before embarking on that final flight.

Re: Murder-Suicides by Pilots Are Vexing Airlines as Deaths Mount

#24

Post by mattkrause »

jaywalk wrote: post #15
phkahler wrote: post #12

>> Preliminary evidence suggests the crash of a China Eastern Airlines Corp. jet in March may be the latest such tragedy, a person familiar with the investigation said. What is the preliminary evidence? For this type of conclusion I would think the first and last bit of evidence would be the control inputs as recorded by the black box. Supporting evidence should be on the voice recording. What is this "preliminary ev…

The video of the plane going down is enough to strongly suggest it. It was almost completely nose-down before it hit the ground, which is basically not going to happen without the pilot commanding it.

This is also (IIRC) how one recovers from a stall, so it could be a “malign” command, a best-effort at fixing a bigger problem, or anything in between.

Re: Murder-Suicides by Pilots Are Vexing Airlines as Deaths Mount

#25

Post by rootusrootus »

travisgriggs wrote: post #20
rootusrootus wrote: post #5

Not just a simple murder/suicide, either, which frequently involves people who know each other. This is flat-out mass murder, terrorism, call it what you will. Killing hundreds of strangers would rank you at the top of any serial killer list.

We don’t have a lot of “what we’re you thinking?!” data on these pilots. I think if you do this servile type of job for years, the passengers become the cattle the rest of of the industry treats them as. My guess (but I’m am not a suicide contemplating jumbo liner pilot), is that any signal from those doing this is against the job/industry itself as the stressor in the pilot’s life. Perhaps we should avoid practices…

The weird thing about that is, at least in my experience, passengers tend to idolize the pilot. I half expect the pilot sees passengers not as cattle, but as subjects ;-).

Re: Murder-Suicides by Pilots Are Vexing Airlines as Deaths Mount

#26

Post by salawat »

robonerd wrote: post #7

> Fatal crashes of private, business, and corporate-executive airplanes have increased after publicized murder-suicides. The more publicity given to a murder-suicide, the more crashes occurred. The increase in plane crashes occurred primarily in states where the murder-suicides were publicized. These findings suggest that murder-suicide stories trigger subsequent murder-suicides, some of which are disguised as airpla…

You can't solve a problem if no one is willing to vocalize and point out that there is one. Societal meta-awareness is a necessary pre-condition of change.

To be honest, I'm surprised there are not more Pilot death-by-suicides seeing as being able to fly is one of the most tightly and mercilessly regulated past times. Nevermind being able to make a living off it. For those for whom the wings are life, I can totally understand how having that jeopardized by a regulatory apparatus, and having the industrial apparatus that makes your living possible be hell bent on minimizing the number of you, could lead to a psychologically fraught population of specialists.

What'd be interesting is a study of whether the occupation has a markedly higher rate than say... Shipping/sailing, bus driving, or train operation. I just wonder if there may be a sub-correlation there with habitually being the Jesus Nut for massive numbers of people on a regular basis.

Re: Murder-Suicides by Pilots Are Vexing Airlines as Deaths Mount

#27

Post by jaywalk »

mattkrause wrote: post #24
jaywalk wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The video of the plane going down is enough to strongly suggest it. It was almost completely nose-down before it hit the ground, which is basically not going to happen without the pilot commanding it.

This is also (IIRC) how one recovers from a stall, so it could be a “malign” command, a best-effort at fixing a bigger problem, or anything in between.

There's nothing in the publicly-available flight data to suggest a stall. The flight was at cruising altitude when the descent started.

Re: Murder-Suicides by Pilots Are Vexing Airlines as Deaths Mount

#28

Post by kubanczyk »

someweirdperson wrote: post #18

That chart of deaths looks fishy. It shows a lot more deaths from 2011-2020 than from 2021-2022. Which seems completely obvious. Of course there is more deaths in 10 years than there is in 1.5 years. Unless they intend to say "deaths per year", but that's not on the lable at least. Numbers for 2020 and 2021 are useless anyway due to reduced number of flights. It looks like someone wants to push their political agenda…

Agenda or not, the whole point of the chart is to show that row with 132 deaths as a solid statistic. At the bottom of the same chart: "* Unconfirmed" in small print. Classic.

Re: Murder-Suicides by Pilots Are Vexing Airlines as Deaths Mount

#29

Post by [deleted] »

vessenes wrote: post #21

It may be that pilot murder-suicides are a terrible problem, but the data in this article does not back this up. The graph of the data they show is an almost textbook-grade ‘evil’ graph. What the graph shows is that * all cause flying mortality is way, way down over the last 30 years * in raw deaths 2011-2020 was way up over prior decade but only slightly up over the one prior to that * there has been one crash this…

[deleted]

Re: Murder-Suicides by Pilots Are Vexing Airlines as Deaths Mount

#30

Post by Retric »

vessenes wrote: post #21

It may be that pilot murder-suicides are a terrible problem, but the data in this article does not back this up. The graph of the data they show is an almost textbook-grade ‘evil’ graph. What the graph shows is that * all cause flying mortality is way, way down over the last 30 years * in raw deaths 2011-2020 was way up over prior decade but only slightly up over the one prior to that * there has been one crash this…

It’s not about the raw numbers but that “fatalities caused by murder-suicides are becoming an increasingly large share of the total.”

The assumption is this a very low probability event that’s neither increasing or decreasing, but if you improve everything else then then people are just going to hear about murder cases like this.

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