To be fair: you can technically do an act alone, and still have accomplices that are involved, but not immediately present.
Airbus dragging a wing on takeoff.
Are these incidents happening more frequently or are we just hearing about them more?
2017 was the safest year ever for commercial air travel, not a single fatality let alone crash in commercial passenger flights. There were some commercial cargo crashes and fatalities. As great as that statistic is, it was a bit of an anomaly to have gone a full year accident free given the huge number of passenger flights. 2018 had a bit north of 500 people die but was still in the top 10 best years. You also have to keep in mind that air travel is only increasing over time and it is statistically incredibly safe. Of course that is little comfort if you are in that unfortunate plane or a loved one.
1 Like
The negligence is way above the level of criminal. I want the entire board and executive of Boeing to go to jail. It’s one thing to make mistakes, but not to reveal those mistakes for years, and then insist they are still safe? Fuck those guys.
“When Boeing began delivering its 737 Max to customers in 2017, the company believed that a key cockpit warning light was a standard feature in all of the new jets.
But months after the planes were flying, company engineers realized that the warning light worked only on planes whose customers had bought a different, optional indicator.
In essence, that meant a safety feature that Boeing thought was standard was actually a premium add-on.”
“After discovering the lapse in 2017, Boeing performed an internal review and determined that the lack of a working warning light “did not adversely impact airplane safety or operation,” it said in its statement.
As a result, Boeing said it did not inform airlines or the Federal Aviation Administration about the mistake for a year.
Only after the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 last October did Boeing discuss the matter with the F.A.A. The company then conducted another review and again found the missing alert did not pose a safety threat, and told the F.A.A. as much.”
“When Boeing explained to pilots in one meeting how systems on the Max worked, the company said that the disagree alert would function on the ground. In the late November meeting, Boeing told pilots for American Airlines (which had bought the add-on) that their disagree alert would have notified them of problems before takeoff.
“We were told that if the A.O.A. vane, like on Lion Air, was in a massive difference, we would receive an alert on the ground and therefore not even take off,” said Dennis Tajer, a spokesman for the union representing American Airlines pilots. “That gave us additional confidence in continuing to fly that aircraft.”
But in the last several weeks, Boeing has been saying something different. Mr. Tajer said the company recently told American pilots that the system would not alert pilots about any sensor disagreement until the aircraft is 400 feet above the ground.”
Wow.
This is very much not the topic of this thread.
4 Likes
Go make a thread about unions and collective action. This thread is for plane crash investigations!
3 Likes
Considering the ridiculous hours some airline workers have to face and the resulting fatigue which can and does directly result in accidents, and which could be combatted with better labor practices brought about by more bargaining power, unions can easily be said to improve safety on airplanes.
3 Likes
Airline unions are also enormously powerful - a small-scale strike can literally shut down entire hubs, due to existing FAA regulations regarding the required number of crew on board.
1 Like
The funny thing is that airlines are already one of the more heavily unionized industries out there. Just about every airline’s pilots (including Delta’s, interestingly enough) are members of a pilot’s union, for example. Many flight attendants are also unionized. Mechanics are as well. In fact, Southwest only recently resolved an issue with their mechanics’ union that didn’t result in a full blown strike but did result in one of those “work to the absolute letter of the regulations” sorts of deals that seriously impacted maintenance turn around times.
Admittedly, I didn’t dig deep enough to see which parts of Delta’s workforce wanted to unionize. At least some of it appears to be their ramp workers. To be fair to Delta, they claim (and this is unverified by me, so take this with a grain of salt) that they already offer better pay and benefits than most of their competitors. However, even if that were the case, I can see the appeal of workers unionizing to make sure that doesn’t change.
Unionizing is certainly a more important consideration with larger employers. A small town shop where the owner isn’t a jerk and knows all their employees’ names probably doesn’t need to unionize. A giant corporation, like Delta, where employees are just numbers in a database somewhere, probably could use a union for at least some segments of their workforce.
So the recent Russian crash landing, that was a thing. Sad and frustrating.
This is a seating chart from the crash, where red seats were fatalities and yellow had injuries.
So, because of the nature of this incident it seems unlikely, even following optimal evacuation conditions, everyone would have made it. But how do y’all feel about the baggage controversy?
Is it just inevitable humes doing dumb things when put under stress? A few shitty people ruining it? Culturally ingrained habits come to roost?
Are people who have grabbed their bags to be held responsible for holding up the line?
Should airlines implement some kind of safety change like locking overhead bins during an emergency? Should regulations be changed to prosecute people who materially impede evacuation by taking items that leads to deaths, with something like manslaughter charges?
I don’t have any answers but my gut says we should do more to train airline passengers around the world to be better participants in the shared experience of air travel.
The name of the thread includes “safety” not “crash investigations”. Unions directly contribute to the safety of the industries they represent. This is true for Airlines, healthcare, steel workers, electricians, et cetera. The only potential exception to that statement is police unions but one could easily argue their unions do protect the police, just not citizens who happen to fail the test of being a white man.
Yes. Manslaughter charges for anyone who got a bag off the plane. Jail time. They killed people.
There was some more to the story in several articles I read, but none of them had enough sources to warrant talking about it here with details (due to prejudices about the nature of the issue and biases in the accounts thereof). But, in a general sense, another factor in these fatalities could be specific passengers who, even without trying to get their bag, still physically impede the egress of those behind them.
You can’t just charge them with manslaughter like you can the people who clearly stopped for their bags. But they could very well directly cause the deaths of those behind them.
2 Likes
Involuntary vs. voluntary manslaughter?
Do you charge someone who, solely due to a physical disability or poor physical fitness, caused these deaths?
That seems wrong regardless of the charge itself.
In that case I’d say you would charge the airline for failing to account for physical disabilities when designing emergency evacuation processes.
1 Like
What if they do account, but there’s nothing they can do if people do not obey. The customer is not always right. Both the airline and passengers bear some responsibility.