Don't judge plane safety from the design of the brothers Wright aircraft

Fun fact: in the 90's, the reference gauge for aircraft safety was 1 accidental fatality per 100 million hours of passenger flight. Which is amazingly safe, far better than car and on a par with train.

Now, facing the growth of air travel, it was decided to raise this bar to 1 per billion hour. Not as an end by itself - this comes at very high cost and had a significant impact on travel prices. But because, with the growth of air travel, this would have implied one major accident per fortnight on average. And because those accident are more spectacular and relayed by media, civil aviation authorities feared this might raise angst and deter the public from air travel.

So, safety was enhanced, but mostly for marketing reasons.

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rcyeh 2 days ago | parent [-]

I'm trying to reconcile your numbers with the Wikipedia "Aviation safety” article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety

which for 2019 describes "0.5 accidents per million departures" and "40 fatalities per trillion revenue passenger kilometers". Considering that many or most passengers fly close to 800-1000 km/h, we're still quite a bit above above 1 fatality per 100 million passenger hours.

Would a factor of 10 be enough? Suppose we go from one major accident per fortnight to one per five months (10 fortnights). Is that higher than what we have seen in the past thirty years?

	▲	thbb123 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		My numbers come from conversations I recall with René Amalberti, a notable specialist in the area, having advised, among others, Airbus. The conversations were around 1993-96, when I was doing my PhD, and thus may be a bit blurry by now. Also, it is perfectly possible the reference values and measurement units have evolved since then. Still your projection shows that both reference indicators and actual values are in the ballpark of the estimates I cited. My (and Amalberti's) main point is that safety assessment is not just about minimizing the raw number of accidents, but involves tradeoffs between various concerns, including psychological perception and revenue. Otherwise, the safest airline would be the one that does not fly anyone.

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pembrook 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's absolutely insane how safe we've managed to make plane travel considering all the variables involved.

Statistically, taking a flight from NYC to London is safer than walking from 5th avenue to 4th avenue in Midtown Manhattan.

	▲	llsf 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		And yet we could regulate even more to make flying even safer, but likely negatively impacting the cost of flying. This is a balance/tradeoff. We agree for some deaths, for a given price. It is the same for food safety, workplace safety. With the latest designs and regulations there has been no major issue across all the nuclear facilities, except for Fukushima which sustained a 9 earthquake + a tsunami... and yet hardly any death (in the 10 years after, one death by cancer got compensated but still not clear if it was directly linked... the evacuation itself might be responsible for up to 50 deaths though, showing how the perception of nuclear can be overhyped). It is possible that the nuclear industry is over-regulated (done mostly after Chernobyl) and could benefit to be reviewed based on the current knowledge.

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nilslindemann 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

But how much does a modern jet cost, including insurance? Compared to an armada of solar driven mini drones?

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whatevertrevor 2 days ago | parent [-]

Without doing or seeing the actual math, my intuition leans on the side of it's probably much more efficient to put people together under certain constraints and fly them in one big container, than lots of unconstrained individual containers. See public transport vs cars for a similar tradeoff.

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nilslindemann 2 days ago | parent [-]

You have not understood the analogy, and I am not explaining it.

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mpweiher a day ago | parent | next [-]

Remember that Poe's Law makes subtle parody or sarcasm almost impossible on the Internet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

Now the only real way I can understand your original comment is that lots of little drones can't actually do the job of commercial passenger planes, and therefore it's an ironic send-off of the people who try to compare the safety of lots of little intermittent renewable generators to nuclear power plants.

Because lots of little intermittent renewable generators can no more do the job of a nuclear power plant than the drones can do the job of the big passenger jet.

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whatevertrevor 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Well, if you don't even want to be understood, why say anything to begin with?

	▲	nilslindemann an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Rereading your comment, if you meant the amount of generated electricity when you mentioned public transport, then it was actually me who did not understand your analogy. My apologies.

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2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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