Escalating scandal grips airlines including American and Southwest, as nearly 100 planes find fake parts from company with fake employees that vanished overnight::Why are so many flights getting canceled or delayed? Blame a mysterious British supplier accused of falsified documents for plane components.
My father has been designing and building bespoke aircraft for 45 years, was an FAA test pilot, inspector, and trainer for most of that time, and was in the US Air Force during the Korean War. He has more aviation experience than most.
His license plate reads GO RAIL and he won’t fly commercial if he can avoid it.
e: I am not surprised.
Sure, but… commercial airliners almost never crash?
Most planes in general don’t crash, fwiw. Most trains and cars don’t, either.
But would you rather your Uber was a Camry or a Lada Niva?
Planes are vastly safer than trains.
“Passenger vehicles are by far the most dangerous motorized transportation option compared. Over the last 10 years, passenger vehicle death rate per 100,000,000 passenger miles was over 20 times higher than for buses, 17 times higher than for passenger trains, and 595 times higher than for scheduled airlines.”
https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics/deaths-by-transportation-mode/
That’s true in general. Planes are very safe overall.
My father has some airlines he’s okay with and some he won’t fly under any circumstances. I’m not talking about overall statistics, but what he knows about the industry’s practices, including mechanical and pilot issues.
Just my .02$
I wouldn’t care because I understand how probability works.
When I’m driving down the highway, I spend as little time as possible next to semi-trailers because I’ve met loads of drivers and know how many are on heavy drugs or haven’t slept for far too long so they can meet their deadlines.
Probability-wise, it’s safe, but I don’t like it. Not everything is about raw numbers, Mr Spock.
Niva🤩
That’s a bit of a myth. Large commercial planes are very save, that’s true. Small planes and helicopters on the other side can be very dangerous, as they fly around in far less controlled situations. They are so dangerous in fact that being a pilot is one of the most dangerous jobs around, only behind logging.
Yes, sorry, I meant commercial planes. I should have clarified.
When I was young and learning to fly, he told me if I ever got into ultralites he’d disown me (he was sort of kidding).
After all of the high profile train derailments in recent history, primarily caused by decaying infrastructure, bad standards, and cutting corners, makes me wonder if there’s someone with an extensive background in rail out there with a license plate that says “FLY AIR”.
I guess it’s really just a question of whether you take the risk you know or the one you don’t.
That’s cargo rail tho. Fatal passenger rail accidents are very rare and involve multiple human and system failures.
Yikes.
For a while I hated flying. Freaked me out even though I knew statistically it is a safe form of travel. Then I watched a bunch of Air Disasters shows and realized how many fixes they have put in place and I felt a lot better about flying.
Then I subbed to /r/AviationMaintenance. I really don’t want to fly anymore.
The whole Boeing Max shitshow is why flying makes me nervous now.
Flying is still safer than driving, FWIW. Not sure if that makes you feel better about flying or worse about driving (for me it’s the latter).
It’s kinda weird actually how normalized driving is. There’s a lot of people who are so scared of flying that they won’t do it. But far fewer people take such an approach to being in a personal vehicle, despite being massively more dangerous.
I think it’s because car deaths are just so normalized that most people are numb to them. It’s kinda like that iconic Joker monologue about how it’s “all according to the plan”. People are afraid of exemplary things, not the mundane things that will actually kill them.
I’m personally more afraid of driving. The learning and tests for pilots are extensive (I’ve done a lot of it), but any moron can get a driving license, and most lose much of that knowledge shortly after.
Other drivers are fucking scary.
The FRA (federal railway administration) is scary. I would trust a train for sure.
Wasn’t everybody saying the opposite like 3 months ago?
The regulation on passenger rail is MUCH stronger then on freight.
Well I guess it’s not mechanic failures of the train that derails them.
Perhaps, but you don’t have as far to fall.
(e: oh, I mistook your comment for sarcasm. Ignore my reply; I agree.)
Ergo, less time to contemplate your last moments. I like it.
Earlier this year a bunch of people got stuck on a 4 hour Amtrak ride for like 18+ hours, without power, toilets or water. Were told they couldn’t leave and not allowed/able to transfer to another train.
I’d rather just die in an incredibly rare plane crash than trust AmTrak to get me across the country in days versus a flight which can get me there in hours.
They need budget to actually upgrade their fleet.
That’s happened multiple times with planes, not just once last year.
It happened as recently as last month
Here are more:
July 2023
June 2023
December 2022
May 2022.
I could keep going, but this is hard on mobile.
Point is, that happens with planes, too. That’s a logistics issue, not about the method of transport.