At the gym today, on all the TVs, the media talking heads were crucifying the FAA for being "unsafe" or playing fast and loose with passenger safety (for not grounding the planes).
I've always held the FAA in high regard, and think they do a good job. Are they really being negligent here? Or is the media just looking for something to spark outrage?
Can anyone with more specific knowledge of aircraft safety weigh in?
Two crashes in 6 months and there's only 350 planes in existence is a pretty bad safety record that is probably on par with Tupolev.
The US can tacitly blame "third world" pilots all they want, but with 300 people dead already, I think it's important for the FAA and Boeing to say exactly what is going on, especially since the planes are in use in the USA.
There is a debate over if the plane's hardware, software, or pilots are at fault-- either the planes should be grounded or the exact protocol should be published all over for the world to know, since it is the passengers' lives at stake.
The Boeing Max 8 entered service in May 2017. Assuming a linear deployment rate, the 350 planes in service have seen an average life of 10 months. Assume 4 flights/day, that's 420,000 flights so far. 2 have gone down. A best estimate of the likelihood that a plane goes down (MLE), p = X/n = 2/420,000 = 1/210,000 ~ Binomial(n=420,000, p=P(crash)). According to the Economist [1] the likelihood your plane goes down generally is 1/5,000,000. So based on the fact that the plane crashes had similar characteristics, the Boeing Max 8 is 25X more dangerous than a regular plane.
25X is the difference between surviving a commute on a bicycle vs a car [2].
EDIT: The Economist source that estimates a plane's p(crash) is questionable, for a passenger plane. If anyone wants to dig into this further, I found this source too: http://www.baaa-acro.com/crash-archives
> 25X is the difference between surviving a commute on a bicycle vs a car
Meaningless and misleading comparison at best.
According to numbers released by Boeing [1] itself, the original 737 designed back in 1967 had a hull loss of 1.75 per million flights, the 737 NG designed in the late 1990s to early 2000s had a hull loss rate of 0.27 per million flights. So Boeing 737 had a 7X less likelihood to crash as the results of 30 years of improvements. 25X difference is going to send the highly unsafe 737 MAX design back to the WWII level. Now think again whether WWII era aircrafts with similar crash likelihood should be allowed to carry passengers in huge volume in 2019.
You number proves one thing and one thing only - FAA has the legal and moral obligations to ground all those highly dangerous 737 MAX immediately.
If I have an upcoming flight on a MAX 8, can I sufficiently compensate for any increased risk by taking the train to the airport instead of a 25km Uber drive?
Given the uncertainty about p(crash) that I mention, then to satisfy confidence limits, you should wear a styrofoam helmet for the full duration of your trip. And post a photo.
This is excellent data and calculation work. I really appreciate it!
I have a suspicion that if you were to remove all instances of terrorism and look at the crash rate of Boeing vs Tupolev, almost all Boeing planes would be way better except for the MAX 8.
The FAA and Boeing need to investigate this, but you can't make such statistical inferences, since you simply don't have enough data points. There could be no more crashes for the next few years with those 350 planes.
The FAA and NTSB are very good at what they do, one of the very few examples of government services that work well together with industry, give them some time.
The MAX8 fleet has been operational for about six months. Assuming 3 flights per day: 350 * 6 * 30 * 3 = 0.189 million flights.
To estimate the probability of two accidents, we can use a Poisson distribution with x = 2 and μ = 0.189 * 0.39 = 0.0737
P(x=2) = e^(-μ)μ^x / x! = 0.25%
I.e your gut feeling is correct (if my math is correct, that is). If one uses the estimate from a sibling comment of 1 crash in 11 million fights, the probability decreases further to 0.01% Actually the correct calculation is:
1 - P(x=0) - P(x=1) = 0.26%
since we are looking for the probability of there being more than one plane crash -- not just the probability of there being exactly two plane crashes.
Might also be worth considering P(2 Crashes | N Miles across 350 planes where at least one operator has incompetent maintenance), because that might not be all that different from P(1 crash | N Miles across 350 planes where all operators properly maintain their planes)
Look at things like Alaska Airlines Flight 261 [0] - safe airframe, deficient maintenance, plane loses all pitch control and impacts ocean. Yes, this still means that Boeing needs to improve things - single points of failures are never OK on a plane - but it also doesn't (IMO) mean the plane is fundamentally unsafe without those fixes.
I highly doubt there have been 11 million airliners manufactured, though - and that's what the 348 number is.
If we assume that the average MAX 8 has been in service for a year (first delivery was a little less than 2 years ago), and conducts 4 flights a day, we get this [0] - a mean of 1/250000. Still worse than 1/11000000, but only by a factor of 50 instead of 50 thousand.
Depends on your assumptions, but safe aircraft will crash making the first data point meaningless as you are choosing it at the starting point. Second, you are not just running one trial on one design but many trails on many designs.
I suggest you try the math as the odds are reasonably high.
This changes if you start talking about crashes since the first commercial flight, but those are again different numbers.
The statistic looks appallingly bad to me viewed as a poisson process. If you had thousands of planes with zero crashes over decades would you consider that as zero data points?
You just can't have more data points, because flight travel is too safe.
And no, the FAA is not really that good, general aviation pilots die all the time from negligence and the FAA doesn't enforce the rules when pilots violate them (in particular low altitude flying).
General aviation is actually quite safety focused. The entire culture is centered around safety; a large amount of private pilot training time is dedicated to the subject; human factors in particular. Go to any fly-in breakfast and talk to the pilots and inevitably at some point during the conversation you'll hear something about being a safe pilot.
That being said, the government gives general aviation pilots a fair amount of freedom once they get their license. There are rules and they are enforced; particularly when violations put the general public at risk. But there's also recognition that it's quite possible to regulate GA out of existence like a lot of other countries have, and that has pretty negative consequences in terms of pilot availability for other purposes. Therefore, regulations scale with the amount of danger the public is exposed to.
For example, ultralight aircraft (single place, <254 lbs, <=5gal fuel, <=55kts) are virtually unregulated; the idea being that they're so small and light that they aren't much danger to others. LSA/sport (1-2 place, <=1320lbs, <=120kts) are regulated; require a license and inspections but less stringent than a private license, and so on. Private licenses can't be used for commercial purposes, and generally speaking more training and endorsements or ratings are required for eg. aircraft with multiple engines; those that are >=12,500 lbs, those that land on water, those that have old-school landing gear, etc. etc.
I would liken GA enforcement to be somewhat like motorcyles. Lots of people die on motorcyles and we see bad behavior all the time, but we don't look at law enforcement and say they're doing a bad job. You're simply operating a platform with a higher probability of death than a car or truck when you do screw up.
Except when necessary for takeoff or landing, no person may operate an aircraft below the following altitudes:
(a)Anywhere. An altitude allowing, if a power unit fails, an emergency landing without undue hazard to persons or property on the surface.
(b)Over congested areas. Over any congested area of a city, town, or settlement, or over any open air assembly of persons, an altitude of 1,000 feet above the highest obstacle within a horizontal radius of 2,000 feet of the aircraft.
(c)Over other than congested areas. An altitude of 500 feet above the surface, except over open water or sparsely populated areas. In those cases, the aircraft may not be operated closer than 500 feet to any person, vessel, vehicle, or structure.
(d)Helicopters, powered parachutes, and weight-shift-control aircraft. If the operation is conducted without hazard to persons or property on the surface -
(1) A helicopter may be operated at less than the minimums prescribed in paragraph (b) or (c) of this section, provided each person operating the helicopter complies with any routes or altitudes specifically prescribed for helicopters by the FAA; and
(2) A powered parachute or weight-shift-control aircraft may be operated at less than the minimums prescribed in paragraph (c) of this section.
Better safe than sorry. For example if a plane crashes in the first flight should we just ignore it because it is statistically insignificant ? 2/350 seems like a fairly good number to ground the plane and do an investigation. In general this is good for aviation industry because next time Boeing will not cut corners as it has so far.
I agree, in my eyes it is debate between "the plane is not safe to fly by anyone"
and
"the plane is safe to fly with additional training, when given"
If the 737 MAX planes remain in the air in the USA, Boeing and US Govt are de facto saying "third world pilots clearly just don't understand how to fly our planes".
If they ground the planes, they de facto admit there is an actual safety issue.
> "the plane is safe to fly with additional training, when given"
If that is ultimately the conclusion, then it still gives the FAA and EASA a black eye, since they allowed the aircraft update without additional training for MCAS.
Best case scenario for Boeing is that the Ethiopian Airlines crash turns out to be something else. If it is MCAS related Boeing, the FAA, and EASA amongst others that green-lit the update without training have a lot to answer for.
> "the plane is safe to fly with additional training, when given"
Here's the thing. The additional training is not strictly necessary. The same procedures pilots are already trained for in previous models should have saved the aircraft. Unless investigations turn up a new problem.
Of course, one could argue that, by disclosure changes to the system, that the pilots would be able to react faster. But that's not really for us to decide.
It feels to me like Air France Flight 447 [0] - there was a flight computer behavior that the pilots didn't know about, but nonetheless following normal procedures would have prevented the crash. (For AF 447 that would have been "point the nose down to recover from a stall", for Lion Air 610 it was "check the trim wheel - you know, that thing that moves right by your knee - if pitch control is abnormal") Unfortunately, as we add more and more safety systems to planes people seem to be forgetting how to compensate for when the systems fail...
Actually, "de facto" is in contrast to "de jure", meaning "in law" or more generally "officially". If they leave the planes in the air, then whatever the offical reason, they are de facto asserting that there is no (significant) problem. (Grounding them on the other hand could just be considered a excess of caution, so at most it asserts "We aren't sure there isn't a problem.".[0])
0: Which action, if either, is definitive might differ if the stakes weren't inconvenience vs death, or if the FAA openly didn't care.
True randomness does not preclude clusters of events. In fact that's the nature of random events.
Not saying I think these are completely random. But since we don't even know the cause of the Ethopian crash yet, who's to say? The causes may very well be unrelated.
The FAA is not an agency that should be assuming something is safe by default. It is an agency that should be assuming something is unsafe by default and demanding the manufacturer prove it is safe.
If it's random chance, Boeing should be able to prove it is random chance. Until then, the FAA should ground them.
Both crashes happened soon after takeoff (6 and 13 minutes) and Boeing seems to think that they know where the error is (stall in high angle-of-attack) and have a fix in pipeline. FAA is taking calculated risk.
How is the FAA responsible for crashes outside of its jurisdiction? There haven’t been any 737 Max 8 crashes in the US. I can’t speak for Ethiopian, but Lion Air and Indonesia in general have a pretty bad safety record. Lion Air was removed from the EU safety blacklist in 2016. In 2013 another Lion Air 737 (not the Max 8) crashed into the ocean near Bali. Lion Air has had pilot test positive for crystal meth (2012). Lion Air has had multiple major incidents with various 737s over the past years.
The Ethiopian Air copilot only had 200 total hours of experience. In the US, you need an ATP certificate with a minimum of 1500 hours to even be a first officer.
Before we start throwing sand at the FAA, why not ask how a 200 hour pilot gets into the copilot seat of an airliner. Let’s also ask why Lion Air failed to fix a problem with the airspeed indicator. During a previous flight the day before the crash, the pilot reported a problem with the airspeed indicator and deactivated the anti-stall system. Lion Air didn’t fix the problem and the airplane crashed the next day. But that’s Boeing’s fault? Lion Air is a shit airline with a horrible safety record. Southwest Airlines uses only 737s and you can count their major incidents on one hand and their fatalities in over 47 years? Just 1.
Lion Air fatalities? Hundreds over multiple incidents. Ethiopian Air? Much safer than Lion Air, but much less safer than Southwest. Ethiopian has a fleet of 108 airplanes and Southwest has a fleet of 754, including 35 Max 8 planes — yet not a single incident despite flying an order of magnitude more frequently than those other airlines.
Air Canada has 24 8 Maxes in the air as does American. Along with Southwest, that’s hundreds of flights per day without incident, but then there is a crash with some third world Lion Air plane where maintenance is provided with proverbial duct tape and Ethiopia Air who has a student pilot as the first officer? Perhaps instead of grounding specific airplanes, we should ground specific airlines, because it’s clear than Ethiopian and Lion Air ought not be flying until they can figure out the basics such as maintenance and pilot training.
Even if all this speculation of yours is true, it's still the FAA's and Boeing's problem.
These supposedly awful third world pilots and aircraft engineers have somehow been managing to fly earlier models of the 737 for decades, but when they upgrade to the MAX variant somehow two of them crash in quick succession?
That either indicates that these two events are freak accidents, or that the MAX shouldn't have the same type rating, the latter of which is on the FAA and Boeing.
There is a long history in aviation of putting safety in front of profits. And what Boeing and the FAA have the appearance of right now is putting profits in front of safety. So you're seeing trust being burned, and other government regulators standing away from the fire to avoid their own citizen trust relationship from getting shredded in the process.
Is it fair? Maybe not all of it. But I think it's completely predictable.
"News" today is a "for profit" enterprise and they will take advantage crises and public outrage to bolster their bottom lines when the opportunity arises... it's nothing personal, it's just the nature of the beast.
Its easier for everyone to just cover their ass and err on the side of caution. If another accident happens politicians would be held accountable.
For the US its harder because they have a stake in Boeing and they don't want to damage them.
Honestly why not ground a few hundred planes just to be safe? It doesn't bother the Netherlands or Singapore. There are other aircraft, nobody is running out.
It could be an EU-USA economic war. We’ve seen the Being competition won over the A380, which had to be abandoned. Maybe any excuse to ground a Boeing airframe and incur costs to owners makes Airbus look better. It doesn’t have to be lobbying, it could be a natural inclination.
It’s mean, but I’m not surprised, given the money in the game, that Europe is acting up much faster than FAA for a Boeing airframe, and the opposite for an Airbus/DC airframe.
1) The direct comparison to the A380 is the Boeing 747 which is being phased out as well. It's not a rivalry that put either of them out, just realities of modern air travel.
2) McDonnell Douglas (maker of the DC planes) is now owned by Boeing and was an American company.
I've always held the FAA in high regard, and think they do a good job. Are they really being negligent here? Or is the media just looking for something to spark outrage?
Can anyone with more specific knowledge of aircraft safety weigh in?