I know that metal fatigue is the primary limiter of aircraft lifespan. How many years does an aircraft typically live for today?
Aircraft age isn't in years, but in number of pressurisations (takeoff/landing cycles). A low cost airline optimising their schedule to squeeze every second of their airframe with constant short distance hopping around would result in much more of those compared to a legacy airline's widebody that is flown daily on a very long flight. So it depends on aircraft type/size and usage patterns, but Ryanair's 737 will be able to handle less years than DHL's 767Fs.
So for the 747 in the story, 22 years is on the long end, but not unheard of.
Climate can matter a bit, since it can exacerbate other issues and cause faster corrosion than expected.
For small non-pressurized aircraft that people do their initial training in, it's very normal to learn in a plane that is more than 60 years old.
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/shattered-in-seconds-the...
In a car, you hit a bump, you keep going. In a plane, something unexpected happens and that plane is grounded. The utility function is just too skewed to take even a slight risk in this regard.
- Pulled over onto the shoulder,
- Passed around a pad to collect everyone's contact information,
- Summoned a replacement bus, and
- Called the provincial police to escort us along the shoulder to the replacement bus.
In the moment, all of this felt a little over the top, and the total delay of about 20mins total was pretty frustrating given that I ended up missing a connection. But at the end of the day, it builds my trust in the safety of that system that the fitness of any particular piece of equipment is not up to the individual drivers to judge— part of paying for a ticket on the state-run transit system is expecting a higher level of safety than, say, what you might get on a Chinatown bus line (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown_bus_lines#Accidents). And I think I was also glad that it hadn't happened to me in my personal vehicle, where I would have to be the one to assess fitness and then deal with the insurance and so-on in the aftermath.
If I felt a bumper or tire bump when I was parking I would not care.
Inspections after abnormals are fairly common and many amount to nothing more than “inspected tail skid and aft fuselage, no defects founds, return to service”.
I was pointing out that the article described a course of action that, in fact, sounds serious to a layperson. It seems to me that "land and have a required inspection" is an indication of seriousness, not an indication of downplaying the severity.
You said, "The article downplayed the seriousness of a tail strike." I was pointing out that the thing they described multiple times did not sound like downplaying to me, as a layperson. "They immediately landed," sounds serious. "They grounded the fleet," sounds serious. "The planes required inspection before being allowed to fly," sounds serious. Nothing in the article reads to me, as a layperson, as if they were saying a tail strike is not serious.
In that case, we're both right about different things. I was referring to the article, and you were referring to the airline.
The airline absolutely did the right thing and took the tail strikes seriously. As for the article, it focused on the strong reaction to the error in the software. The article did not discuss the serious consequences of a tail strike. Considering that multiple aircraft (and many lives) have been lost due to tail strikes, I was surprised that it was not mentioned.
It is.
We could certainly operate an aviation industry with a lot less regulation and a lot less care for safety. Operated that way, air travel would be noticeably cheaper. But it would also be more dangerous.
Frankly, I like the trade-off we have chosen.
I am saying that the article said things that sound severe, as a direct response to the claim that the article downplayed the seriousness.