Probably. But the South Korea crash has not helped.
It would be helpful to provide a link to the event…
Yes, because the odds of dying in a plane crash, regardless of the manufacturer, is negligible, about 1 in 11,000,000. Specifically for Boeing, in 2018–2022, the chance of dying on a flight was 1 in 13,400,000.
I’d recommend waiting to hear something about causes before drawing conclusions from this event.
There are unconfirmed claims of a birdstrike (probably not the aircraft’s fault). But how this might lead to a gear-up, no-flaps landing is hard to say.
Even on its worst days, airline travel today is still the safest or one of the safest means of transportation.
No, both because of their manufacturing issues mean their safety is inferior and likely getting worse over time as things fall apart, and because otherwise, you encourage other manufacturers to let their own quality and safety slide. “Rationality” isn’t just about looking at historical statistics and ignoring the context. And the relative safety of air travel isn’t some innate feature of the industry, it’s something created over time that Boeing’s practices are undercutting.
I’ve flown multiple times on Southwest flights on 737 MAX 8 planes without issue. No idea about any issues that would affect how difficult it is to fly but the passenger compartment is nicer than the Boeing 737-700 and 737-800 planes that are also in their fleet. (Some planes include larger overhead bins that can fit six carry-on bags.)
Keep in mind maintenance by the carrier. The plane that crashed, AIUI, was 10 year old, so it had flown thousands of hours without a major failure since the day it rolled off the assemby line. It’s too early to tell, and it’s tempting to blame Boeing right now, but let’s wait and see what caused this.
Like others have said, it’s too early to tell what the cause was, and right now signs point to a severe bird strike, which is going to be something independent of whoever manufactured the airliner.
Beyond that, Boeing has made thousands of 737-800s over a period of roughly 14 years. And those thousands of airliners likely have millions of safe hours and miles on them. If they were cars, we’d be heaping accolades on Boeing as the most reliable manufacturer out there.
They’re supremely reliable- comparable to the A320 series in recent years; the 737 predates the A320 series by a couple of decades, and the accident incidences reflect that, with the early ones showing a higher accident rate than modern ones.
Spoken like someone that doesn’t ubderstand airplanes. It’s not like Airbus is any better.
Most notably:
and:
A serious, but probably unanswerable, question.
I’m always wary when it comes to statistics (and yet asking a question about it). Air travel is safe. The number of deaths per passenger km (or mile) is extremely low. And of course it is. A lot of people travelling fairly long distances will give that result. But how about individual trips? By that I mean that when I get in my car to go do whatever, that’s one journey. I do a fair number of those every week. So maybe 20 trips per week or a round 1000 in a year. If I travel long distance a lot, I might make up to10 air travels in a year, with a normal year skewing towards the lower end.
Obviously, given the number of people in the world that travel by land and sea, using all forms of transportation, the number of travels are many magnitudes larger than the number of flights, and probably not possible to pin down.
But, as a thought experiment, given those parameters, is air travel really that much safer, for each completed journey?
Serious injuries would also be of interest. If I lose one of my arms or penises, that matters.
Aside from that, the risk of dying on a commercial passenger flight is far lower than the risk incurred by commuting to/from the airport on roads. If you commute 20 miles each way to/from the airport, your risk of dying in a car crash is about 1 in 1,880,000. This means that when you consider the overall odds of death due to leaving your home and arriving at a hotel in your destination city, the risk added by the flight itself is pretty much negligible in that overall risk, regardless of whether you fly Boeing or Airbus.
But if we want to pick nits…
Since the OP is asking about risks associated with planes from a particular manufacturer, you’d want to make some sort of adjustment for crashes that were due exclusively to pilot error. This gets murky in certain cases:
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The two Boeing 737-MAX crashes were precipitated by mechanical failure, but then the pilots struggled to respond appropriately. How much of that was due to crappy training on the new system? Was this a Boeing problem, or a pilot problem? And in the end, how much of that risk has been alleviated now because of remedial training?
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The crash of Air France 447 (an Airbus product) had a whole lot of pilot error going on, but a big part of the problem was the peculiar way the plane’s instrumentation responded at extreme angles of attack (which confused the pilots), the peculiar way it managed simultaneous control stick inputs from the two pilots, and the fact that there wasn’t a really bright flashing light or loud alarm to tell the pilots that BOTH of them were trying to fly the plane at the same time. As with the 737-MAX crashes, how much do we blame the plane, how much do we blame the pilots, and how much of this risk has been alleviated going forward?
It’s complicated. But as noted above, no matter which brand you fly, if you’re willing to accept the risk of driving to/from the airport, then the hazard of the flight itself is, in comparison, negligible.
Well, the airline number I could find is 1 accident (not necessarily fatal) per 800K+ flights.
Pretty sure that’s still gonna beat the pants off driving.
That is largely an unintended consequence of US regulations. The reason Boeing rebuilt the 373 into the Max (which is different enough that it probably should have been a new plane) is that they were able to make it enough like the other 737s that the FAA gave permission for the training to be substantially the same, so airlines could use the same pilots on 737 Max jets as on the other planes in the 737 series. And it’s way cheaper for airlines, because each pilot aircraft certification is time consuming and expensive. So Boeing knew they could sell more of a “new 737” than of a brand new plane.
But the plane is actually quite different, and behaves differently when stuff goes south. Leading to pilot error when the plane failed.
I read a really good article about this in some mainstream news source, probably the WSJ, when the crashes were in the news. I’ll go see if i can dig that up, but it was a while ago. Maybe @LSLGuy knows something?
I get a little nervous taking any flight. I know it’s safer than driving, but I also have no control over the situation, and driving is also something I do frequently. I still got on every flight and the nervousness goes away once we’re in the air. It does return a little as we descend towards landing too. Being nervous to a great enough degree is irrational I suppose. The OP gives no indication of reaching that level though.
I fly a lot and for some reason tend to read about plane accidents in detail before I travel.
No idea why - maybe tempering fate?
Then I sometimes have to take some kind of anti anxiety medication once I am on the plane.
I was keenly interested in the Boeing Max 8 after the 2 accidents since my cousin was a 737 pilot at the time (now retired).
Then covid took over the news cycle and I forgot all about it.
To my surprise I found myself seated on a Max 8 twice this year on one of the legs to Aruba. I admit that my heart did a momentary flutter but again I just forgot about it for the most part.
Beautiful interior and smooth ride. But what a tragic history.
Having flown both MAXes and NGs side by side. …
They’re not that different. In fact a lot of stuff on the MAX was deliberately left exactly like the NG: very old fashioned. For the reasons you cite.
The process of getting FAA (or the EU’s EASA) approval for a derivative design is 90%-95% smaller (so 5% to 10% the effort) than the FAA/EASA process for certifying a new design. That saves years of time and billions of dollars for the manufacturer.
And yes, by keeping the derivative design similar enough from the pilot POV the airline customers can save on training costs and if the types are similar enough, even use the same pilots on both variants.
The 737 is in no sense unusual in this. The DC-9 / MD-80 / B717 had the same factors driving its evolution, as has the A320 which started revenue service in 1988, 36 years ago. There are a lot of differences between an early A320 and a brand new one. A lot.
IME the real issue with the 737 mishaps is that it is ultimately a 1960s design through and through and requires actual well-trained crew to fly safely. The Airbus is a 1980s design that was designed from the git-go to be used by relatively less-trained more automation-dependent pilots. As a result the Boeing is relatively less forgiving of incompetence. In a world with lots and lots of small tycoon-managed startup airlines in rapidly advancing formerly-poor countries overseen by corrupt regulators, creeping incompetence is becoming a norm.
@Der_Trihs has a point that there is a worldwide assault on the historical “safety first almost no matter what it costs” culture of commercial aviation. IMO he places more blame on Boeing than is appropriate. Yet. Perhaps they have been “scared straight.” Perhaps not. We shall see.
Dana Air flight 0992 springs to mind…
That’s an argument for not flying at all, not a defense of Boeing.
And I understand that if you replace engineers with MBAs like Boeing did, you get worse engineering. With airplanes or anything else. And do keep in mind that the results of their incompetence are still in the pipeline and will continue manifesting in unforeseeable ways for many years.