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Comment by stouset | Hacker News Reader

> You will say that until the day you will die in a crash.

For christ’s sake, this level of hyperbole is completely unjustified.

A supplier found a non-safety-critical flaw in a component they were manufacturing. It’s being fixed for new planes, and a plan is being devised to retrofit a fix on existing fleets. What more do you want?

Yes, the earlier issues with the MCAS and single AOA sensor were tragic and highlighted serious and inexcusable deficiencies within both Boeing and the FAA. And yet, since resolving this issue, the 737 MAX has returned to service with an exemplary safety record.

Flying on a 737 MAX—even including the fatal crashes due to MCAS—remains quite literally the safest way to travel by both time and distance.

Chill.

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>Flying on a 737 MAX—even including the fatal crashes due to MCAS—remains quite literally the safest way to travel by both time and distance.

There are 2,698 A320neos in service that have been involved in two fatal accidents, with no passenger fatalities.

The first was when an A320neo struck a motorbike that mistakenly entered the runway during the aircraft's landing. The two riders on the motorbike were killed and no passengers were injured.

The second incident was when an A320neo struck a firetruck that mistakenly crossed the runway during the aircraft's takeoff. Two firefighters were killed and no passengers were injured.

Boeing 737 MAX: 1,144 built, 346 passenger deaths.

Airbus A320neo: 2,698 built, 0 passenger deaths.

There are multiple aircraft types that have had 0 passenger fatalities. There is one aircraft family that is not only statistically safer than the 737 MAX, but also safer than the entire 737 family: the ERJ.

The A320neo sprang to mind instantly but I looked it up and the Dreamliner is safer with 1,048 built and 0 passenger (or other) fatalities.

Your statement is completely false.

Ludicrously false.

Maliciously and purposefully false?

Calm down there, Mr. Quixote.

I was sloppy with my wording, no need to assume I’m trying to deviously manipulate people into flying towards a fiery death while I twirl my mustache.

>Flying on a 737 MAX—even including the fatal crashes due to MCAS—remains quite literally the safest way to travel by both time and distance.

Are you claiming there are no safer planes than the badly designed ones that killed a bunch of passengers recently?

No, I apologize for my lack of clarity here.

I am claiming that flying, even if you choose to do so exclusively on 737 MAXes, is still by an enormous margin safer than any other mode of travel.

Unless you're using the figurative definition of literal - that's simply an incorrect statement. I think you're transferring the general statement about the safety of flying to the safety of one particular model of plane. Other plane models exist without the innate flaws of the 737 max that are safer and have not had the fatal accidents the max did.

It is clear from the rest of their post that they have a reasonable grasp of the relative safety characteristics of various modes of transportation, so they are clearly just being a little sloppy with their wording. The concept that they were probably trying to get across was that the 737 MAX, despite being probably around 1000x more dangerous than the average commercial airliners while the defects were present, was still safer than the other standard modes of transportation on a per passenger-mile basis. This was probably true relative to cars, but was likely untrue relative to trains or public transportation as the 737 MAX was probably around 1 fatality per 100 million passenger-miles while the defects were present. I am unsure of the safety characteristics of the 737 MAX after the fixes.

Thank you, you are correct in your assumption that I was sloppy in my wording :)

Note that I am considering the combined safety record of the 737 MAX both pre- and post- MCAS fix. You are also correct that before this issue was resolved, this model compared poorly against some modes of travel.

Now that it’s back in service, it’s slowly converging toward the same hull loss record of other modern airframes. We have no reason at this time to suspect that retrofitted planes or newly produced ones will fare any worse than other contemporary models.

  while the defects were present

Oh they're still there, that's why the MAX7 and MAX10 still haven't been certified.

Can you name an airline that is selling tickets on either of these models?

Spoiler alert: neither the MAX7 nor MAX10 have ever been certified. So, although plenty are on order with e.g. Southwest, no. The 8 and 9 were approved with a wink and a nod because they're already out in the wild and in fact the only significant difference between the 7/10 and 8/9 is that the latter were actually sold before the problems with the MAX came to light.

Boeing is still working on a proper MCAS fix…

The whole 'emulate another plane' thing is plain stupid. You want the pilots to feel the plane and how it behaves and not some emulator complex state machine screwing it all up

I don’t think you quite understand exactly how many fly-by-wire planes are in the air at this very moment.

That said, MCAS is a reasonable solution to a genuinely crappy problem. The 737 MAX is for all intents and purposes a reasonable refinement to an existing widely popular airframe. And yet, in chasing reduced fuel consumption through larger, more efficient engines, the handling characteristics changed enough that it would otherwise have forced airline pilots to undergo expensive retraining to fly on the new model.

So here’s your options:

1. require customers to retrain their pilots on the new revision of the airframe 2. launch the plane with a higher rate of fuel consumption 3. launch the plane with a system that makes it handle like the older model in the few regimes where it’s meaningfully different

Keep in mind that the first two options put you at a significant disadvantage to your primary competitor. Which option do you choose?

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