Ok, the safest way to travel is what we're always told. But for me flying at 36,000 feet at 500mph in an aircraft laden with fuel petrifies me from the moment I board the plane. Yet most people I know feel no fear whatsoever. Watching 'Air Crash Investigation' no doubt doesn't help but I think i could quite happily never board a plane again.
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With car crashes for instance the same chain of events happen again and again, yet next to nothing is done to prevent those things happening.
For example, an episode last night was about a crash in 1972, and it lead to major changes in the way flight crews are trained and how they operate within the aircraft.
There's no other part of my life where there is such a culture of identifying safety issues and making positive changes to address them. That is why the airline industry has such a sensational safety record.
Just compare, 2 737 Max' crashed, every single one was grounded. 1 Concorde crashed, the entire fleet was geounded. Ford sold the Pinto for years, despite everybody knowing it was a death trap. Renault sold the model 4 for over a decade, despite tests showing a rear impact at 40 miles an hour could send the engine block (it was rear engined) through the passenger compartment killing or maiming all passengers.
Then there's the commercial pressures; super fast turn-around times of the budget aircraft where safety checks are curtailed, rapid development shortcuts of aircraft (Boing), tired pilots and crew, lack of training for crews (737 Max). No thanks. Glad to see the back of the industry.
You're 3.5x as likely to die in a train as in a plane, over 100x more likely to die in your car, and that's assuming you travel the same distance. I usually get away once or twice a year, so probably average around between 2k and 10k miles a year by plane. I do 20k+ miles in my car, so I'm 200 to 1000 times more likely to die in a car compared to a plane.
We were all kept on board forever for reports/inspections/probably breath tests etc.
It's probably the most alienating and unnatural mode of transport so far invented, shrouded in a rich ideology of 'safety' mostly owing to vested interests. Those vacuum tubes that Musk is developing (the Hyperloop) holds more promise for me, not that i'm gagging to travel anywhere at great speed for any purpose!
Plus the vast majority of bird strikes result in nothing more than the plane having to land again, you only hear about the rare fatal ones and you get confirmation bias. There's actually only been 5 major accidents (i.e.planes lost) to bird strikes since 1975.
Watched the film Sully last week with Tom Hanks as the pilot who landed a 737 on the Hudson River. Shows that even under extreme circumstances a stricken plane can be landed safely. There was also a recent program about crashing an empty jumbo jet in the desert just do they could see exactly what happens in a crash. Even without a pilot (but with someone guiding it down to a few thousand feet) a plane can survive a crash landing.
One great things with planes (as Air Crash Investigators shiws) is that because of black box recorders the airline industry can learn from a crash & modify or eliminate errors. With a car crash investigation a lot is down to he said/she said.
There's plenty of ways of measuring near misses, and the criteria of planes being close to each other is just convention isn't it? In actuality we will never know how many planes 'just made it' to their destination; there's too much complexity, so the industry keeps it simple, and that's understandable from an operational, customer assurance point of view. It's simply the fact that a plane arrives that gets counted as a plus in the safety record and for me that's not enough for my risk appetite.
Whether you enjoy it, are terrified - yet live to tell the tale -, die in mid-air, or on land, or in the sea... the plane you're on is polluting the skies and the air that we breathe.
Is your journey necessary? In all likelihood... probably not.
"the safest way to travel is what we're always told". This isn't a conspiracy, it's factually correct. There is an average of one fatality for every 287 million passengers carried by UK operators. This can be compared with a one in 19 million chance of being struck and killed by lightning in the UK or a one in 17,000 chance of being killed in a road accident. (stats from CAA - UK only, but the stats wouldn't, I would suggest, change materially for any other country).
"super fast turn-around times of the budget aircraft where safety checks are curtailed". Quick turnaround times and aeroplane utilisation is the basis on which the industry survives, but it is never at the expense of safety. Funnily enough the people that would never allow this to happen, even if an airline encouraged it (which they don't) are the pilots...
"Glad to see the back of the industry." Fortunately for the global economy, global connectivity and the millions of jobs that depend on it, it's not going anywhere.
"On a plane the small mistakes can be catastrophic". Rare. Aeroplanes have multiple levels of redundancy built into every system and action.
"Then there's all the near misses, the vast majority of which will never be made known or publicised". Every "near miss" is known about, reported on, and published.
"shrouded in a rich ideology of 'safety' mostly owing to vested interests. Nonsense.
"airlines have encouraged pilots to fly beyond there hours and make extra return journeys. Why? To save money!" Airlines are commercial businesses, but safe operations are the number one objective of every airline, underpinned by being the most regulated industry at every stage of operation (including pilot and cabin crew rest regulations). Safety is simply not compromised.
"In actuality we will never know how many planes 'just made it' to their destination; there's too much complexity, so the industry keeps it simple". The opposite is true in both cases.
None of the above obviates the challenge of every incident and accident, which thankfully, because of the level of regulation and process built into the industry and its operations, is rare.
The 737 Max8 situation is not unique in terms of the development of new technology (look up the launch of the British de Havilland Comet and it's square windows) and flying will become, once again, even safer because of the lessons learned from two tragic incidents. However (and this may well be a case in point) if you think commercial interest and industry obfuscation trumps safety, Boeing's £15 billion plus impact (so far) and the grounding of those aircraft for nearly a year tells a slightly different story. If there is any evidence that Boeing willingly and knowingly compromised safety in the development of the aircraft, then Boeing will be no more. However, I doubt that this will be the case (this is an interesting legal review; https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=51ad035f-87fa-42da-bd00-3bb76e1017ee
If you want to understand a bit more about the airline industry and its regulation, the following is a good start point. https://www.caa.co.uk/Consumers/Guide-to-aviation/Aviation-safety/
EDIT - re my point on Boeing and commercial interest, Bods point below and my subsequent link may change my view. However, my analysis above in relation to airline operators (rather than manufacturers), remains true, and flying remains safe relative to all other forms of mass transport).
https://transportation.house.gov/news/press-releases/after-18-month-investigation-chairs-defazio-and-larsen-release-final-committee-report-on-boeing-737-max
Boeing and the FAA in the cross hairs and rightly so - it will be interesting to see how these findings play out as they suggest that, counter to my point above, there was a degree to which commercial interest took precedent, and regulation wasn't strong enough to challenge what was happening...
Because of this, I only fly when I'm saving the pandas.
Also has a very hard landing in high winds in NY. Was with a mate.....and although he denies it, we were definitely holding hands at some stage 😄
It works in an Indian accent.
Surely that's got t o be one of the most easy to understand phobias?
Cue the "you're more likely to get run over by a bus" comparisons