Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is my plane a 737 MAX?

ismyplanea737max.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 579 posts

Re: Is my plane a 737 MAX?

#211

Post by yeahtoh »

gorkish wrote: post #72
jmward01 wrote: post #40

Aviation is safe. An issue happened and appropriate steps have immediately happened and in the end an already incredibly safe industry will be even safer. If a car has an issue we don't blink and we loose nearly 40k people a year in the US alone, but a plane has an issue and we panic. Yes, panic. This is not rational or helpful and is a huge reason why aviation is so antiquated. You want flying cars? Stop panicking a…

/end of thread You can apply this same argument to literally fucking everything.

[dead]

Re: Is my plane a 737 MAX?

#212

Post by parkererway »

teeray wrote: post #111
alpb wrote: post #26

Are you less safe on a 737 MAX than driving to the airport in a car? Genuinely curious, I’m trying to understand if this whole saga is statistically significant.

Fallacy of Relative Privation in this case. The correct question is: “Are you less safe on a 737 MAX than any other commercial aircraft?” The answer to this question for a properly functioning airline industry should always be “no.” Given the recent incidents, the answer to this question is, unfortunately, “yes.”

Doesn’t the answer to that question have to be less for all but one airframe?

Genuinely - trying to understand the point here.

Re: Is my plane a 737 MAX?

#213

Post by bigfishrunning »

xahrepap wrote: post #34
alpb wrote: post #26

Are you less safe on a 737 MAX than driving to the airport in a car? Genuinely curious, I’m trying to understand if this whole saga is statistically significant.

I've heard a lot of people say this in these comment threads, and I think this glosses over the actual issue: safety is getting worse, not better or even staying the same. So it's MORE statistically significant than it was. The trend is heading the wrong way. Air safety going down is a trend you want to stop ASAP. Not wait around until it's just as dangerous as something else like driving your car.

I also think comparing air travel to car travel is a bit unfair -- it's better to compare air travel to Bus travel (the driver has a CDL) or Train travel (The engineer is specially trained)

Car fatalities likely dwarf bus and train fatalities too. It's not that airplanes are particularly safe, it's that cars are particularly unsafe.

Re: Is my plane a 737 MAX?

#214

Post by arcticbull »

gruez wrote: post #131
diggan wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But at that point it's too late. I doubt people are that afraid of 737 Max that they'll cancel a flight (and forfeit their ticket) over it. Luckily the airlines I travel with only use Airbus, but if they were using 737 Max, I'd definitely book tickets that I can change at the last minute, and refuse to board if it turns out to be a 737 Max. Yes, that's probably illogical. And probably much of life is illogical. But…

>I'd definitely book tickets that I can change at the last minute, and refuse to board if it turns out to be a 737 Max. E̶v̶e̶n̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶f̶l̶e̶x̶i̶b̶l̶e̶ ̶t̶i̶c̶k̶e̶t̶s̶,̶ ̶m̶o̶s̶t̶ ̶c̶a̶r̶r̶i̶e̶r̶s̶ ̶d̶o̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶o̶w̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶c̶e̶l̶ ̶l̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶n̶ ̶2̶4̶ ̶h̶o̶u̶r̶s̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶d̶e̶p̶a̶r̶t̶u̶r̶e̶ Also, airlines would most likely charge you the difference between the fare price, which…

> Even with flexible tickets, most carriers don't allow you to cancel less than 24 hours prior to departure.

They definitely do! It's usually until just before departure - but some flexible tickets you can just no-show and get a refund. In some cases, there may be some no-show penalty, but definitely not universally. I can't think of any US carriers that impose a 24 hour cancelation restriction. I'm sure there's some international ones.

> Also, airlines would most likely charge you the difference between the fare price, which for a last minute ticket is might be a significant price difference.

Usually within the US, you can do a same-day change or same-day standby for some nominal, fixed amount of money on any ticket (free with status) and swap to any flight within ~24 hours (specific restrictions vary).

Here's American's policy on same-day changes [1]. Here's Delta's [2]. United's [3].

> So you'd rather lose a few hours of your life waiting at an airport, than losing a few minutes of your life over the risk of dying from a 737 Max? Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

On this we completely agree. I ran the numbers and your likelihood of dying on a 737 NG is 1/400 the risk of dying in a car on a per-mile basis. Based on the median distance from home to a US airport of 17 miles, you're more likely to die on the road to and from the airport than a 16,500mi flight on a 737. And infinitely more likely to get injured.

[1] https://www.aa.com/i18n/plan-travel/extras/same-day-travel.j...

[2] https://www.delta.com/us/en/change-cancel/same-day-flight-ch...

[3] https://www.united.com/en/us/fly/travel/trip-planning/flight...

Re: Is my plane a 737 MAX?

#215

Post by 4death4 »

legitster wrote: post #70

Given that every affected 737 MAX has been grounded for inspection already, this seems a bit hyperbolic. If you are still worried about some hitherto unknown new problem from Boeing, it could just as likely come from any of their airframes.

You could have said the same thing after the first grounding of the 737 MAX.

Re: Is my plane a 737 MAX?

#217

Post by alrs »

gruez wrote: post #71
alrs wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first worry as an American is having a pillar of your country's economy managed by incompetents.

Sounds a lot like "yeah sure, fear over 737 Max is overblown, but the fact that I was thinking about it in the first place says something about the current state of affairs". https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/aaaah

It sounds nothing like that. Boeing is going to lose deals because carriers don't want to deal with repeated groundings. The US economy will reflect that.

Re: Is my plane a 737 MAX?

#218

Post by gruez »

jessriedel wrote: post #119
jmward01 wrote: post #40

Aviation is safe. An issue happened and appropriate steps have immediately happened and in the end an already incredibly safe industry will be even safer. If a car has an issue we don't blink and we loose nearly 40k people a year in the US alone, but a plane has an issue and we panic. Yes, panic. This is not rational or helpful and is a huge reason why aviation is so antiquated. You want flying cars? Stop panicking a…

Strong agree with this, although worth noting that a crude back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the 737 Max has a rate of fatal accidents per mile that is only safer than driving a car by a factor of ~10. (See below.) Since cars are one of the most dangerous forms of transportation, it's certainly not crazy that people would want to avoid an airplane model that's only 10x safer than a car. Bicycles are only…

> 1,300 aircraft have been built since the [737 Max] first started flying in 2017, with two deadly crashes

How valid is this calculation for today? Presumably they fixed the issues with the two deadly crashes, so those arguably shouldn't be included in future forecasts.

Re: Is my plane a 737 MAX?

#219

Post by kube-system »

philipov wrote: post #157
kube-system wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has obvious topical context.

Regardless of who is ultimately at fault, this is about people not wanting to fly on these planes. They don't care if it was Boeing or if it was a subcontractor, they just want the information they need to cancel their flight or demand a different plane from the airline.

If it was a subcontractor, wouldn't they want to not fly on planes made by that subcontractor?

Re: Is my plane a 737 MAX?

#220

Post by flashback2199 »

MattGaiser wrote: post #174
caycep wrote: post #165

So - question - how much initial capital/expertise would be needed to make a new ground-up competitor to McDD-oeing, but with the engineering/quality focus of the old Boeing? I'd imagine there must be enough disgruntled aerospace engineers to create a fresh company w/ a blank slate rethink of airliner design.

It would be enormous. Getting airlines to buy from even medium-sized aerospace companies is a challenge. Bombardier couldn't sell its CSeries over fears that it would not be around for the multi-decade lifespan of the plane. Same plane under Airbus is a hot commodity.

So enormous that musk won't touch it. He's said a plane company is something he wants to do but can't. And that wouldn't even be large airliners.
Post reply on HN