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

FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

851–860 of 884 posts

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#851

Post by pi-e-sigma »

thfuran wrote: post #838
pi-e-sigma wrote: post #807

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to this chart https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics... buses and trains have 0.02 to 0.04 deaths per 100,000,000 miles travelled. This compares to 0.01 deaths in the commercial aviation. So pretty much on par, but if you switched to deaths per hours of travel, which is IMHO better statistic, assuming that a average plane flights say 10 times faster than a bus/train (800km/h vs 80km/h…

Why is comparing per hour better? The utility of a transport system is in its ability to move things, not in its ability to consume time.

Because people generally spend much more time driving cars and being on the trains and buses than being on a plane. The intuitive reading of the statistics of accidents is 'how likely it would happen to me in my _lifetime_', and not based on how much you actually fly or drive. For such intuition one would need to compare the same amount of time spend in either mode of transport because they would represent the same amount of somebody's lifetime.

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#852

Post by philwelch »

mattmaroon wrote: post #848
philwelch wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you change the endpoints on that graph to 1985 and 2000, the drop in spending in the 1990’s is a lot clearer. 325 billion to 287 billion is a sizable decrease—about 11%—, especially in non-inflation-adjusted dollars. It only looks small compared to the post-9/11 increase in spending, and a larger share of that spending was operations rather than procurement.

Right, but he said “massively drew down”. 11% would not qualify. It was relatively brief during a period of normally low inflation, so even in real dollars, it was not a steep decline.

At this point you’re just making a semantic argument about the word “massive”. The impact of that 11% cut in spending was massive; between 1990 and 1998, manpower dropped from 2.18 million to 1.59 million and the total number of active ships in the Navy dropped from 570 to 344. The total budget didn’t drop by a similar proportion because there are a lot of expenses that are much less flexible; it’s not simply a matter of employing fewer personnel and buying less equipment.

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#853

Post by thfuran »

pi-e-sigma wrote: post #851
thfuran wrote: post #838

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is comparing per hour better? The utility of a transport system is in its ability to move things, not in its ability to consume time.

Because people generally spend much more time driving cars and being on the trains and buses than being on a plane. The intuitive reading of the statistics of accidents is 'how likely it would happen to me in my _lifetime_', and not based on how much you actually fly or drive. For such intuition one would need to compare the same amount of time spend in either mode of transport because they would represent the same a…

No, not at all. Given that people generally spend more time in cars than on planes, assuming that they spend the same time on each, as is tacit in treating per passenger hour risk as comparable to a lifetime risk, is flat out wrong. You'd need to know the expected total time or distance traveled by each mode.

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#854

Post by pi-e-sigma »

thfuran wrote: post #853
pi-e-sigma wrote: post #851

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people generally spend much more time driving cars and being on the trains and buses than being on a plane. The intuitive reading of the statistics of accidents is 'how likely it would happen to me in my _lifetime_', and not based on how much you actually fly or drive. For such intuition one would need to compare the same amount of time spend in either mode of transport because they would represent the same a…

No, not at all. Given that people generally spend more time in cars than on planes, assuming that they spend the same time on each, as is tacit in treating per passenger hour risk as comparable to a lifetime risk, is flat out wrong. You'd need to know the expected total time or distance traveled by each mode.

By your logic death per miles travelled by different mode of transport statistics would be useless, too, precisely for the same reasons you are stating, that is needing to know how many miles you actually travelled using each mode of transport as it's not immediately obvious if average person gets more miles on a plane than in a car in his lifetime. However, it's immediately obvious that an average person spends more time in car/bus/train than on a plane, and you are agreeing with it. So deaths per hours travelled is actually better as it gives you some immediately insight. If fly and car/bus were the same in deaths per hour you know straight away that car is less safe because you spend more time in a car.

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#855

Post by cf1241290841 »

habinero wrote: post #849
cf1241290841 wrote: post #777

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Providing an negative economic incentive for bad actors is still a good idea.

We already have laws for when people are criminally negligent. You want people incentivized to participate in safety culture, not motivated to frame others or destroy evidence to save their jobs. People will always make mistakes and have poor judgment sometimes. That will never go away, and punishing people will not stop it. A robust safety culture expects this to happen, and builds in mechanisms to catch problems.

That doesnt seem to be the current IS state when it comes to certain companies. Some dont have a safety culture on company level but one of corruption and economically viable malpractice. Which means the negative effects you describe are already happening.

Once policing fails to stop their trend economic pressure is really the only thing that is left. Especially if policing failed due to said company being able to use economic power to influence the policymakers and the people tasked with enforcing those policies.

As long as people buy stuff from companies with a negative safety culture that have political pull, they dont have an incentive to change. I dont see an alternative to boycotting these dangerous malfunctioning actors.

edit: Or to get to your initial wording, this isnt about how to deal with people making errors or having poor judgement but people acting with intent for economic reasons.

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#856

Post by walleeee »

danpalmer wrote: post #552
Nextgrid wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what changed in Boeing's design, testing and/or manufacturing processes My theory is that this is not limited to Boeing or even aircraft design, it's a much deeper and systemic problem affecting all kinds of fields. We've had a lot of industrial accidents lately. When aircraft manufacturing was an emerging industry there were tons of undocumented safety margins and "slack" in the design and production pipeline. Ove…

I pretty much agree with this. The aggressive push towards optimisation everywhere in life is causing strain at the margins. I think this has always happened though, including without capitalism – it's basically the definition of growing pains. It's a natural process to some extent, and I'm not sure that corrections ever really happen, we just find new areas, new things that don't have the same limitations and grow i…

Seems more parsimonious to explain aggressive optimisation everywhere as contraction pains. Efficiency and optimization as the obsession of a society aiming to rescue itself from encroaching constraints within a historically successful but fading paradigm- the facade of which may long outlast its public interest utility, propped up for the convenient credibility it lends private, perhaps mercenary, interests

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#857

Post by TylerE »

b112 wrote: post #835
TylerE wrote: post #816

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, no? Earth to the moon is 200,000 miles away. Call it a half million for a round trip. Airliner passenger deaths are 1 per several billion miles.

Yes, but your response does not invalidate the premise.

You didn’t give a coherent premise, just this wild tangent.

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#858

Post by thfuran »

pi-e-sigma wrote: post #854
thfuran wrote: post #853

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not at all. Given that people generally spend more time in cars than on planes, assuming that they spend the same time on each, as is tacit in treating per passenger hour risk as comparable to a lifetime risk, is flat out wrong. You'd need to know the expected total time or distance traveled by each mode.

By your logic death per miles travelled by different mode of transport statistics would be useless, too, precisely for the same reasons you are stating, that is needing to know how many miles you actually travelled using each mode of transport as it's not immediately obvious if average person gets more miles on a plane than in a car in his lifetime. However, it's immediately obvious that an average person spends more…

>By your logic death per miles travelled by different mode of transport statistics would be useless, too, precisely for the same reasons you are stating, that is needing to know how many miles you actually travelled using each mode of transport

Yes, if you want to calculate a lifetime risk, you must know (or estimate) a lifetime usage.

>So deaths per hours travelled is actually better.

It really isn't. Does the average person spend as many times more time in cars as planes are faster than cars? If so, per mile risks would be comparable to lifetime risks. The average person probably spends more time in cars than that, though that still leaves per mile risk as closer to accurate (for the average person. Are you the average person?). But neither per mile nor per hour risk should be conflated with lifetime risk, and if you're not going to use personalized assumptions about usage, it's much better to just look at actual mortality data to avoid the issue entirely. For most comparisons though, risk/cost/pollution/whatever per passenger (or for goods, ton) mile is probably by far the more useful measure. If something needs to get from A to B and you need to know what that entails or what the best option is, those are the more directly relevant figures.

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#859

Post by mcmoor »

thfuran wrote: post #838
pi-e-sigma wrote: post #807

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to this chart https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics... buses and trains have 0.02 to 0.04 deaths per 100,000,000 miles travelled. This compares to 0.01 deaths in the commercial aviation. So pretty much on par, but if you switched to deaths per hours of travel, which is IMHO better statistic, assuming that a average plane flights say 10 times faster than a bus/train (800km/h vs 80km/h…

Why is comparing per hour better? The utility of a transport system is in its ability to move things, not in its ability to consume time.

I'm not really sure which metric is better but one logic of using per hour is that I think vehicle breakdown occurs more likely the more hour they're active, not the more distance they travelled https://www.lytx.com/blog/measuring-engine-miles-to-hours-to... . Also chances of external condition like weather ruining your trips are also more likely with more time because forecasting can only go so far.

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#860

Post by albert180 »

WalterBright wrote: post #569
dotancohen wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The premise that MCAS makes pilot type training unnecessary, then under some circumstances the pilot should override MCAS, is dangerously flawed.

Pilots are already trained to stop runaway trim failures, and received an Emergency Airworthiness Directive explaining trivial procedure to counter MCAS failure. Of course, the MCAS software was badly designed, and the single path failure, are squarely Boeing's fault. Pilots must always be ready to deal with runaway stabilizer trim, on any aircraft type. It's a "memory item".

The whole shit happened because Boeing only used only one sensor for the system because then it wouldn't be seen as safety critical and wouldn't need to be mentioned extra in the manuals
Post reply on HN