Comment by zamadatix
1 year ago
The company definitely can't stay out of the news and it's gone downhill over the recent years but you've picked an interesting post to lament about those on. The news they can't stay out of is over 4 years old in this case. The model of plane it's about (787) has never had a single fatality despite >15 years of operations and >1,000 units operating today. In all, deaths are probably the worst possible metric to berate Boeing on - including every death (e.g. hijackings, not just engineering failures) their popular 747 line has had comes to <6,000 fatalities despite carrying billions of passengers over a period of >50 years.
Despite their ever increasing incompetence on delivery speed, test compliance, and innovation... commercial air travel with Boeing (and other major air manufacturers) has always been one of, if not the, safest mechanisms of travel we've ever executed on. Particularly the last 5 years have been the safest period in terms of air travel deaths or injuries.
None of that means we shouldn't criticize Boeing by any means, just that doing it over perceived death and accident counts because of what news headlines imply is complete nonsense in terms of actual numbers no matter how you slice it. It's important those kinds of things are reported but it's equally important to not get swept up in paranoia over it.
Agreed, my 737 fears were relieved by researching how many of them are in the air at any moment, how many millions of trips they fly each year, how old airframes can get before they get retired, etc. Even the "worse" models are feats of engineering.