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Even if there were 10x the number of accidents flying would still be one of the safest ways to travel.
But I’d still avoid it because of the ergonomics and customer service.
Thank you! I tried to make the same point in the comments of another recent article. This isn't a reason to avoid air travel (yet).
However, it is a reason to criticize the Trump administration, and they deserve blame for the excess deaths under their watch. We should be hammering home the point that cutting regulation and oversight will nilly comes with life and death consequences. If it isn't lack of FAA funding that kills you, it could be cuts to NIH, leaving WHO, turning a blind eye to corruption (which compromises quality - ask Russia), etc.
The problem is that even if it's still safe now, these changes cannot help, and it won't be apparent until planes start crashing.
The industry also runs on perception of safety more than the reality. If it's perceived unsafe, then the industry could collapse quickly.
Oh, heres the thing. Even if you WERE to convince Trump that his own direct decisions is what led to the deaths of hundreds of people? He would just shrug and not care.
Which you wouldn't be able to do because narcissists don't have the ability to accept that they're at fault for something.
Airplanes aren't as safe as trains!
And the externalities from air travel are fucking horrendous.
Totally! And trains are so much more comfortable and I don’t have to let them take my nudes before I get on.
As much as I actually like driving if I’m going to a city with good transit I vastly prefer the train. Plus the stations are usually right downtown.
The downtown stations are so very nice. I love rolling right into the core and being a few minutes from everything.
Having to train in from the airport isn't bad, but after a long trip adding another hour to get from the airport to downtown is annoying. Of course, many US cities don't have a train from the airport to downtown, so that only applies in developed locations.
One of the upcoming wacky infrastructure choices is the high speed rail in Las Vegas to LA. On the Vegas end the train station is out of town like it's an airport. So you train from LA to Vegas and then... bus in? Join a massive line of taxis/ubers? It's so very clumsy. Why the casino operators didn't find a way for the rail station to be in the center of the strip so people fall of the train and into their casinos is still beyond my ken.
Airplanes aren't as safe as trains!
In the US, air travel is safer by an order of magnitude. According to the National Safety Council, scheduled airlines have a passenger fatality rate per 100,000,000 miles of 0.001 while rail has a fatality rate of 0.025. Hell, busses are safer with a fatality rate of 0.0066.
I'm sure rail safety is probably better in Europe and Japan since they have better rail infrastructure and more passengers.
A /r/dataisbeautiful post from several years ago also shows a similar story.
My confidence in air travel fell completely after the former head of QA for Boeing’s plane factory said he wouldn’t get on a Boeing plane
most people aren't aware that Air Traffic Controllers are forced to retire at 55. no old, slow reaction employees allowed.
when Reagan fired thousands of ATCs in the 80s, then hired and trained all new scabs, he inadvertently created an enormous cohort who would all be retiring at around the same time due to forced retirement.
fast forward to today,
data nerds can point to historical accident statistics from the past 20 years up to what, 2020? all you like. trend lines don't often accurately predict the future, they merely describe the past.
I recommend thinking twice before placing all your loved ones on a plane over the next couple years. there's going to be more of this.
My brother works ATC at one of the busiest airports in the country. While forced retirement is at 55, an informal poll of his coworkers that he and his buddies did this week revealed that nearly all of them are planning to take early retirement at 50.
They mapped it out and 80% of the facility will be retiring by 2030. To account for this, his facility alone will need to hire nearly 100 controllers. I asked him how many controllers they've hired recently. He said 2 since 2022.
We're fucked.
Thanks Regan. And Trump. It's gonna be a painful number of years/decade(s) for parts of the US.
This is great to read as I prepare for another trip my company need's me to go in.
Quick everyone, start talking about high speed rail!
Maybe we have the slightest shot of actually building out, y'know, cheap, fast, effective mass transit for once?
High speed rail is amazing! Let’s do it
Elon is in power and has too much money shame him into building hyperloop finally
He never intended to build the Hyperloop. From the start, it was a lie to shut down a proposed project to build a west coast high speed rail line.
Not as long as the cargo railroad companies hold all the power. America needs an alternate timeline with no fascism, sane governance, and making all railroads public.
Added with Trump firing faa employees
I'm not flying until this gets sorted out. The fact that we elected a fucking Russian saboteur twice is just incomprehensible. NPVIC might save us in the nick of time, but I doubt it.
Just getting us peasants prepared to not have air travel available to us.
This is funny to me because the amount of commerce in the U.S. that is dependent on reliable air travel for average Americans is massive. If people stop flying the economy is going to be what ends up in freefall.
https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/data/Pages/monthly-dashboard.aspx
Media is once again the enemy. Crashes happen. They are just getting more clicks right now so they are getting reported more.
Yep! I genuinely believe this is an effort to 1) keep Americans too scared to leave and 2) keep foreigners too scared of coming in
Idk about all that. I feel like the media latches onto things that are getting clicks which makes the public more concerned something is happening more which means more people click on it.
It's a disgusting feedback loop that ends up just making people feel shitty.
I just wish traveling were a more pleasant experience in general. I gotta take an extra day off after coming back home because modes of travel in USA are so exhausting.
I really don’t think we hold any industry to the superhuman standards we hold aviation to.
The only other industry that individuals entrust their lives to in large numbers that I can think of is the medical industry, and that kills around 100k people a year, yet people don’t quit seeking treatment en masse (problems with US medical system access and affordability aside).
Pilots are tested at least yearly with simulators dealing with emergencies of all sorts, from fires to engine failures, education and reviews of aircraft systems and aviation regulations, along with medical examinations and random drug testing to continually check fitness for flight. Cabin crew also see yearly testing dealing with emergencies, medical or things like fires in the cabin, evacuations, along with training on how to deal with passengers who may be drunk or a threat in some way.
The best time to fly is after incidents. Everyone is on high alert, training departments and unions remind crews to take extra care in their duties, all crews are aware of extra scrutiny.
Reminds me of that guy who deliberately books vacations to places that have just suffered terrorist attacks. Cheap as fuck and super safe since there are security forces everywhere. Not sure I agree with the practice, but can't really fault the logic.
The best time to fly is after incidents.
That used to be good advice. The best time to fly now is before planes started falling out of the sky.
You're mostly right, but your comment also assumes independent probabilities rather than correlated probabilities of danger. Sometimes multiple crashes can trace back to the same cause: one particular manufacturing defect on a model of aircraft sold thousands of times, one bad practice on air traffic control procedure, one bad actor targeting multiple aircraft, etc.
Purely hypothetically, as an example, if it turned out that there was a terrorist group targeting aircraft via anti aircraft missiles, then that group's success at bringing down an airliner would actually worsen the odds of passengers on other aircraft, at least until we receive external information that the threat has passed.
If only DEI was abolished, then these planes should never have crashed
/S
I'm not flying anywhere while the orange turd is in office. Fuck it, less money for the economy I guess. U wanna fire air traffic controllers while there is an active shortage? Planes crashing left and right ever since. Hard pass.
I am a aircraft mechanic and I can tell you most of us take our jobs very seriously. Those that dont, don't get put on the bigger jobs. We take our job very seriously. Air travel is safe. I am extremely careful with my job. I always think about safety and how what I'm doing effects folks.
It's not that you don't take your job seriously, it's that the same amount of work still needs to be done with less people and less oversight. People get tired. People make mistakes when they're tired and overworked.
Does this mean airlines are going to drop prices to drive tickets sales? Because I'm due for a vacation...
No, they're going to demand government handouts, then spend it on stock buybacks and executive bonuses. Then demand more government money.
So weird that it's only fallen 7% considering before January 2025 we hadn't had a fatal plane crash in almost 16 years, and now we've had multiple in a month.
Flying is going to become exponentially more dangerous in the coming years.
They should have the crash chance on the departures/arrivals screen.... Ohio... 7:56am on time 67%. On boarding, Sanf Francisco 4:25pm delayed 75%.
An aside from the main point here, but I haven't read much about the Toronto Pearson crash. Does it have anything to do with US air control or regulations (like plane maintenance) or is it just being lumped it?
From what I've been able to tell the Pearson crash was a fucking fluke. Actual details tend to be released slowly though so one of the theories (incorrect de-icing before take off) will take a long time to prove or disprove.
Of course not.
I believe it's due to bad weather and strong winds.
Glad I don't have a job that requires a lot of travel anymore. There ain't no way.