If you figure 200 people on the plane (it wasn't full) and they each paid $500 less than market rates, that's $100K that they lost on one flight alone.
Here's from Wikipedia:
> After one year of service, 130 MAXs had been delivered to 28 customers, logging over 41,000 flights in 118,000 hours and flying over 6.5 million
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX
That's 315.38 flights on average per plane per year (41,000 flights in year / 130 planes)
How many crashes have there been...? 2 or 3?
Let's assume (very very rough estimate) we have similar averages across 1400 planes, that's 441,532 flights last year. If we assume two 2 crashes per year.
So you'll have a safe flight 99.9995% of the time.
[1] https://www.statista.com/chart/31529/most-airplane-accidents...
This is not even considering the numerous documented issues with their quality control programs. Also, the global average I referred to are for accidents, not crashes like your numbers.
If anything, the couple days airlines had to spend with the 737s grounded did more FAA-enforced financial damage than the collective of consumers is likely to bring to bear. If there's a trip I need to make, I'm not spending 3x the money to maybe not be on a 737.
There's also just the incident treadmill. Boeing is getting all the bad news now for good reasons, but how confident are we that there isn't a similar Airbus issue that'll come out soon? The 737 seemed like a fine plane before a few years ago. If we're playing a pure game of statistics, the 737 looks bad, but maybe it's just a really unlucky streak? Even terribly designed products that shouldn't have been allowed work fine a lot of the time.
That's not how confidence works, while Airbus has confidence from the public and doesn't do something to lose it, they have the upper hand.
You are trying to use numbers and statistics to fight against a loss of confidence, that won't work in the short to medium term, confidence and trust is built upon human emotions, not hard data. There's a reason why "loss of confidence" is a major trigger for economic crisis, the feeling itself triggers a domino effect that feedback into the issue, aggravating it.
The same is happening to Boeing, they lost confidence while Airbus didn't, people won't trust Boeing, bad press will be focusing on Boeing, so on and so forth, until they have regained confidence. It's well deserved, if they didn't lose it they could continue their practices and potentially worsen the safety of their products since there wouldn't be blowback triggering fear in their executives, loss of confidence is working as intended.
It's not that you shouldn't pay attention to the incidents, just that when you're evaluating risks, it's important to not just assume that the most recent and high profile problem is indicative of higher risk in that system, as opposed to it being that system's chance to have its 0.01% failure case hit. As they say in finance, past performance is not indicative of future outcomes.
And TBH, if pricing were equal there's no way you could get me to fly on a 737-MAX. My thesis is just that everybody else is valuing the risk much higher than it is, and that 737-MAXes have likely had every bolt combed over at this point, and the systemic issues found indicate that really it's every plane made in the last 25 years that is risky.
By contrast, I was booking a flight next month and could have gotten an Airbus flight for $150, but on an airline I loathe, so I took a 737 flight for $250 because assuming I don't die, it'll be a much better experience.
Thats 100% safe fight the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A320neo_family
Your are trying to whitewash Boeing and doing it all wrong.
> 2 x more Airbus A320neo were build/in service than the Boeing version
Lots of people die, likely many more due to shoddy work on the drive to / from the airport. As a society we could probably save far more lives with far less cost by say changing tire grippiness standards / mandating people get their tires inspected.
The Boeing stuff is just for the most part moral grandstanding. Everyone drives around all day every day in cars that are far less safe than a 737-MAX without worrying about "reassuring those who died".
Worse yet, we let people ride bicycles to work which are far more dangerous than cars.
As I said before people are extremely bad at modeling risk. How much longer of a life span would a person have if they flew only airbus vs only Boeing?
My guess. The exact same.
How good are people at evaluating risk of e.g. “conspiracy to defraud the Federal Aviation Administration”?
https://www.justice.gov/criminal/criminal-fraud/case/united-...
Not taking into account that all of the crashes so far happened in third world countries which had much lower standards for pilots than the US.
> Following the March 10, 2019, crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 outside Addis Ababa that killed all 157 passengers and crew, Yeshanew said it was clear that nothing had changed within the culture of the airline.
> Besides the poor practices in regards to safety, he said he knows of at least two mechanics in the past three years who were beaten after running into trouble with the airline, and he feared the same fate awaited him.
https://www.occrp.org/en/daily/10859-claims-of-corruption-vi...
Also:
> The NTSB further detailed:
> Appropriate crew management of the event, per the procedures that existed at the time, would have allowed the crew to recover the airplane even when faced with the uncommanded nose-down inputs.
Sometimes crap is just crap.
One can always use statistics to convince themselves that crap is gold if you look a certain way.
Lots of buyers though..
We have a winner!
We won't know that until they de-plane.
Then, deregulate the industry and make safety a personal responsibility.
And that's the problem with deregulation. It's inefficient because it places a greater burden on everyone and therefore a greater burden on society. Nobody has time for that. Except rich people - they can hire personal parachute checkers.
And it dilutes responsibility by hiding defects behind plausible deniability. Like what happened after the Lion Air crash, when Boeing tired to put the blame on poor piloting skills, bad training and a sub-par, 3rd world company.
may be the bit you're missing :)
Goddamn capitalism.
And you get better healthcare than poor people in Africa.
Check your god damn privilege you rich **.
Probably scrambling and cutting corners. You know, using dish soap as lubricant, hotel keycards instead of proper tools, leaving out bolts, typical industry stuff ;)
Yes, and in times past Boeing was leaving a lot of money on the table by doing things in-house, employing a unionized workforce and applying more stringent quality control. Not everything is an opportunity for expansion, and aircraft manufacturing is famously capital-intensive and slow to build up.
Airbus recently added another A321 assembly line -- by repurposing its idle A380 construction hangar. There's a cautionary tale for you, if you're aware of history.
And ironically, the last time I read about it, they were having production delays on the German production line..
They are having Tapas though, not just cheese.
>And ironically, the last time I read about it, they were having production delays on the German production line..
To be honest, that can be caused by literally anything. Even chemical contamination from cheese in the paints.
Fair point!
> Even chemical contamination from cheese in the paints.
Ah, possibly from imported, French paints. The cheeses I encountered in Germany were unfit for use as biological weapons or contamination agents.
Yes, I was blaming the cheesy French for the delays.
Possibly not too much.
The airline industry is very cyclical, and you don't want to be caught with over-capacity at the wrong moment, after having invested billions to get there. That's a fast-track to bankruptcy.
For Airbus, by the time the investments for a capacity increase will take effect, the industry will possibly be in a downturn again due to the next world crisis rearing its ugly head. So they will possibly invest, but with a view on the long-term.
After the pandemic, there was a massive jump in demand for airplanes. Leaving Airbus in a mich better position and now they are hiring massively in order to fill demand.
Increasing capacity is very hard though and both Airbus and all their suppliers have to do it, for it to lead to a meaningful increase in productivity. Again, ironically, this is a massive benefit for Boeing as Airbus has a very full order book, buying planes from Boeing becomes much more attractive, because the alternative is no airplanes.
Seems Boeing management needs to be sued to oblivion. Have Boeing executives force a sale of their collective stock, and that will cover United losses.
\s
You know what needs to happen instead?
Forcefully bump their share price up, FUND them to fix safety, switch out the managers, and allow them to keep earnings secret for the next 16 quarters but publish quarterly safety reports in lieu.
They were an engineering culture. Their CEO led a deliberate campaign to drive senior engineers out of the company. It worked.
I don’t know a single company that has recovered from it, 16 quarters or otherwise.
Otherwise it would probably be like a car. What you can't fix through a mechanic is a defect, and what you wear down (e.g. tires) are consumables.
Just think of it like car. The operator/owner is responsible to keep it maintained not the manufacturer. So replacing tires and making sure brakes and so on are in reasonable shape.
On other hand it is on manufacturer to provide defect free product. Meaning brake failure is not their fault.