Hacker News Reader

Comment by nomercy400 | Hacker News Reader

Wait a minute,

- Why are 100 HIV experts on the same plane in the first place? Hasn't somebody realized this is a risk and usually considered 'a bad idea'? - Why are they all flying across the entire world (Amsterdam-Melbourne) to visit a conference? If you have to fly 100 people around the world for just a conference, isn't it a better idea to hold the conference in a location nearby, say Europe (depends on how many are coming from Australia of course)?

Of course, it's absolutely terrible what happened yesterday and the mood here (NL) isn't great. Don't get me wrong on that part.

View on HN

1. They're all on the same flight because it's possibly the most convenient one for reaching Melbourne. 2. The conference is for 25000 delegates from all over the world, and has been running since 1985 when the first one was held in Atlanta. See here for a list of cities that have hosted it : http://www.aids2012.org/WebContent/File/History%20of%20the%2...

Nobody factors aircraft accidents or intentional shoot-downs for conferences like these, for the very reason that air travel is so ridiculously safe that it is pointless adding the additional logistical cost to do so.

I didn't realize it was a conference in which about 25000 people participate. Then losing 100 experts all of a sudden sounds much less critical to the research field than the article suggests.

It is usually a few professors, who have their researchers and a bunch of PhD's with them. The thing with researchers though is that if done properly every single one of them should be a leading expert on a very specialised area of the field. Only the full professors probably could more generally be considered a leading expert probably.

> Hasn't somebody realized this is a risk

It's horrible what happened, but you can't call it a risk. There's a bigger risk from them taking the bus to the conference.

Heck, there's a bigger risk just all being in the same building.

Also, when I read the article it made it seem like these 100 were the top people in the field, but other replies made it clear that while it's a big loss there are a huge number of people in the conference.

Not exactly true. That would only apply if we were talking about all flights on average and ignoring the unique situation of flying near the Ukraine - Russia border right now.

I would say the risk is dramatically higher in that region - clearly - than for your average flight. It's a war zone in which they're now shooting down planes flying at high altitudes.

> There's a bigger risk from them taking the bus to the conference

The risk to an individual attendee of dying in a bus accident on the way to the conference is certainly higher than the risk of dying in an airplane crash on the way to the conference.

However, the risk of 100 of them dying if they all take the same flight is almost certainly higher than the risk of 100 of them dying in bus accidents on the way to the conference (even if they stay together and all travel in the same bus). Even very bad bus accidents in cities in first world countries tend to leave many more survivors than fatalities.

You are correct that it's a small risk. But the risks of losing 100 people in a bus accident or to the building collapsing are rather small compared to even a plane crash..

Anecdotally, I was in the organisation of a conf who lost a significant portion of our visitors to a tram collision a few years back. Not really of course, they were just half an hour late :P

"If you have to fly 100 people around the world for just a conference, isn't it a better idea to hold the conference in a location nearby, say Europe (depends on how many are coming from Australia of course)?"

The International AIDS Conference happens in a different city every two years, each time highlighting the successes and challenges of that particular region of the world in dealing with HIV/AIDS. It's not unusual at all for a large number of delegates to have to fly across the world.

> Why are they all flying across the entire world

That's how the better conferences work.

Having been involved in international conferences as an attendee, the conference organiser takes care of the flights, accommodation and conference tickets either in-house or outsourced to another company that specialises in this.

I don't think there was anything wrong with having 100 HIV/AIDS researchers on the same flight. Planes don't just drop out of the sky, flying is statistically the safest form of travel. It might seem stupid in hindsight, but that's only because you know the plane went down. This is a good example of Hindsight Bias; there was no way we could have predicted the plane was likely to crash (at least, up until they entered Ukrainian airspace).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com