Originally Posted by
MemberBerry
I disagree. Safe/safer/safest. You can clearly compare safety levels, so safety is a continuum. I could even argue that this continuum is multidimensional, but for simplicity let's assume it's unidimensional.
From where I am sitting (1A, please) safety is not a continuum. It's not even a line. It's a dot where all those lines cross. What you're saying does make sense, but only as politics. Or, God forbid, policy. The law cannot scope all possible variables, of which aviation has a lot. But as long as safety is the priority for all parties involved, it's a very small dot in the universe.
If the engineer is absolutely sure he's done everything in his power and to his knowledge to make the plane safe, there is no continuum for him. He may have missed something that is impossible to check or even unknown (who knew you can't fly next to a volcano before BA9), and it very well may be the deciding factor in disembarking at the gate, but he should be sure he's done his part. The pilot must be sure he has full control of the aircraft and its systems. There should be no surprises for him, and he must have enough time to react to variables, be it a memory recall or an FCOM expedition. And for the passenger safety is an even smaller dot - will I be alive after the plane comes to a stop on the ground?
Everything else, the laws, the standards, the policies, is just politics, or worse, semantics. Bottom line that I hope everyone here agrees - if a plane is too expensive to be made safe, it mustn't fly.