One of the worst weeks for the airline industry....
 

With the latest news from Kyrghyzstan, I think it was really a bad week for civil aviation.

The invisible hand of the market, perhaps? As an industry, have we cut too much?

....or are serious accidents so relatively rare now we are making too much of a small statistical blip in accident figures?

If you think of how many flights there are a day world-wide, how many people travel and make it to their destinations safely, it really is amazing how reliable and safe Air travel is...

If there was a global report, probably triple the amount of people have died in car crashes today alone.....

This doesn't mean loss of life is acceptable, but when we do things techinically the human body wasn't meant for, the chances are it can happen, and always will.

Sad fact of life, we just live in this safety bubble now....

There have been much worse days, weeks, months then this!

Think of the time around 9/11... obviously the 4 aircraft caught up in that, then the Milan tragedy and the JFK A300 tragedy all within such a short space of time.

I just come back from two IB flights via Madrid fortunately we used 15 and we avoided any untoward sight (that just to give you a good understanding of my mood).

I tend to remember a saying on a book back in late 80's that if safety would remain in the 80's rates, by 2000's it would mean that a 747 would crash each week. So I think we are equally safe but more accidents even with better rates in would mean slightly more accidents.


Rwy in Sight

One week is one week. The annual total is the bench mark. If we have one week without any prangs - shall we say that's a good week for the airline industry? Oh, that's right, we have weeks like that for the greatest part of the year.

Yes, it is horrible but life is like that.

With no major accidents to either a US major or an EU major since November 2001 - and only a very occasional fatal accident to second tier and charter carriers - air travel is incredibly safe.

In fact even in 20 years the improvement in safety has been profound - and it was safe enough back then!

Being on a plane is probably one of safest places you can be anywhere on Earth.

Off course that is of no comfort to anyone involved in this week's accidents but I do think we should look at the bigger picture which is one of outstanding safety.

It's usually just a consequence of randomness that things like this happens in clusters.

Which begs the question, is there any authority or organization, including the Boeings and EADS of the world, who do keep track of these incidents/accidents and look for trends? I remember hearing stories years (decades?) ago about diminishing safety margins, and just wondered when the system would run out of them altogether.

Money makes the Fan turn 'round
 

face it...if we spent unlimited money on maintenance, training, rest for crews, and making a corporate mindset of safety, real safety number one things would be better.

but its a business. oh well.

If you combined the Spanish and Kyrgyz incidents into one it would STILL barely make the list of 20 worst INDIVIDUAL aviation accidents:

100 worst aviation accidents

let alone weeks.

That assumes a total of 237 deaths for this week's two crashes (alllowing for possible further deaths among the badly injured - with luck an incorrect assumption!!)

Tenerife was a worse 60 seconds than TWO weeks worth of Madrid/Kyrgyzstan incidents.

But then, understanding statistics and the likeliness/relative size of events is one of the things the human mind does worst..otherwise no one would buy lottery tickets - and no one would be afraid to fly.

Maybe true, but the same could be said of any industry. Not many people survive 150MPH+ crashes but motor racing drivers regularly do. Would Joe Public pay for F1 safety standards?

Consumers want products at affordable prices and just how many consumers look at safety when purchasing a product? Not many I would hazard a guess.

How many would be prepared to pay more for (the perception of) improved safety. Even less?

Aviation is so safe already that to acheive any meaningful improvement over an already impressive safety record would be too costly for the consumer to accept.

Guatemala plane crash kills 10
 

Guatemala plane crash kills 10 including Americans By JUAN CARLOS LLORCA, Associated Press Writer
Sun Aug 24, 6:09 PM ET

GUATEMALA CITY - A small plane crashed in a field in eastern Guatemala on Sunday, killing 10 people, including five Americans, aviation and army officials said.

The Cessna Caravan 208 was on route to the town of El Estor when it crashed in a field of crops about 60 miles (100 kilometers) east of Guatemala.

Eight passengers were killed, along with the Guatemalan pilot and co-pilot, Civil Aviation official Jose Carlos said.

He said five of the passengers killed were Americans, but nationalities of the other three had not been determined.

Four other Americans on board were injured and were being airlifted to a hospital in the capital. Carlos did not know the hometowns of the Americans.

Aero Ruta Maya, the airline operating the plane, said only 12 people were on the plane, including the pilots, a discrepancy that could not immediately be resolved.

Joanne de Bickford, who said she was the daughter of the airline's owner and was helping manage the crisis, confirmed there were Americans on board. She said the airline did not know how many people died.

The army provided a list of passengers, but the names appeared to be garbled. The U.S. Embassy did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

"With no major accidents to either a US major or an EU major since November 2001 - and only a very occasional fatal accident to second tier and charter carriers - air travel is incredibly safe. "

Without even googling, how about:
- AF A340 in Toronto
- AF F-100 in Pau
- IB A340 in Quito
- BA B777 in LHR
- various SAS Q400

Mostly without loss of life (I believe the Fokker killed a motorist), but any of these could have turned our far worse.

RiSq

The road death rate in the U.S. alone is running at around 42,000 per year - can you imagine the outcry there'd be if the airline industry killed a tenth of that figure ???

BRE- So out of your 5 examples, how many souls lost were there? Leading to the statement being more or less factually accurate! What point are you trying to make? How many deaths there might have been? Should I not go jogging because I might get knocked down?

I think the only point BRE is making, is that if there were little or no casualties since 2001 in Western aviation, that is mostly due to sheer luck rather lack of accidents.

Have always maintained that the most dangerous aspect of any flight is the drive to and from the airport (and especially in Russia:eek:). Certainly it is a bad week, but as already pointed out a cluster of accidents is statistically viable. And, with a cautious nod towards randomness, one encouraging aspect of the accidents this week is how in most of them there have been survivors, despite the typical SLF fear (use Mrs ES as a benchmark for this sort of thing) that a crash is inevitably fatal, and presumably there would have been more survivors but for the fires. Has any more work been done on anti-misting kerosene or was Dryden the last word on the subject?

But you need it to mist so it burns nicely! That's why it's there.

Quote: "Sad fact of life, we just live in this safety bubble now...."

DON'T KNOCK IT!!!!!


(Shouldn't tempt fate I know, but such crashes often seem to come in threes.....)