Meaning that, over the past century, there was actually a ton of "testing in prod" in aviation. The industry learned many, many valuable lessons only after the billions and billions of hours of flight time exposed issues that weren't caught in preflight testing.
GP would like aviation users ("passengers") to not be the ones doing the testing. You state aviation users historically tested -- it's why flight regulations and rules are written in blood. I suspect the blood of passengers is exactly what the GP would like to avoid.
I can't tell if you didn't make the connection, or if your commenting style is just to naturally start negatively. My suspicion is the former, given the throwaway account.
the more "failed tests" in production, the safer aviation becomes.
we give thanks to those who have fallen (literally, out of the sky).
You’re deluding yourself if you think the aviation industry just sells directly to customers new aircraft without testing them.
“Testing in prod” means, “I’m gonna try this thing and I’m not sure if it will work and my test environments don’t cover that so I’ll go straight to prod and see if it breaks.”
The software industry is the only place where that works because shipping to prod is literally faster than test suites in lots of cases and the stakes are so low on failure.
Unexpected catastrophic failures in prod != testing in prod.