LillyPip@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
My father has been designing and building bespoke aircraft for 40 years, was an FAA test pilot, inspector, and trainer for most of that time, and was in the US Air Force during the Korean War. He has more aviation experience than most.
His license plate reads GO RAIL and he won’t fly commercial if he can avoid it.
After all of the high profile train derailments in recent history, primarily caused by decaying infrastructure, bad standards, and cutting corners, makes me wonder if there’s someone with an extensive background in rail out there with a license plate that says “FLY AIR”.
I guess it’s really just a question of whether you take the risk you know or the one you don’t.
That’s cargo rail tho. Fatal passenger rail accidents are very rare and involve multiple human and system failures.
I am an Aerospace Engineer (I was an Aircraft Maintenance Engineer by trade prior to going to University) and I have spent the last 30 years in the airline industry….it isn’t as bad as you are allegedly making it out to be….pilots are not engineers either……
Experience from the 60’s and 70’s isn’t really relevant to today’s industry- I started in the early 90’s and it’s massively different today from back then….so your point is?
I am also based in Australia so that might also make a bit of a difference because we have had no airline crashes in this country and we have a very strict Potentially Unwanted Parts (PUP’s) system and other checks and balances that because we are under EASA based regulations and not FAA ones (who, by the way allowed the PMA part system….where parts are no longer required to be manufactured by the OEM for aircraft….and I’ve got plenty of stories about that nonsense…)
So yeah…. I quite happily still fly everywhere around the world….
My dad is both a pilot and engineer. I’m aware not all pilots are. Sorry if I didn’t make that clear. If you’re in the industry, this will probably dox me, but my dad designed the Tailorcraft tri-gear, and converted the original WACO biplane blueprints from the Smithsonian to modern specs. He also designed the new WACO Super class and their conversion to sea floats about ten years ago or so.
He’s currently 88 and still works full-time at WACO. He knows what he’s talking about.
Yikes.
For a while I hated flying. Freaked me out even though I knew statistically it is a safe form of travel. Then I watched a bunch of Air Disasters shows and realized how many fixes they have put in place and I felt a lot better about flying.
Then I subbed to /r/AviationMaintenance. I really don’t want to fly anymore.
The whole Boeing Max shitshow is why flying makes me nervous now.
Flying is still safer than driving, FWIW. Not sure if that makes you feel better about flying or worse about driving (for me it’s the latter).
It’s kinda weird actually how normalized driving is. There’s a lot of people who are so scared of flying that they won’t do it. But far fewer people take such an approach to being in a personal vehicle, despite being massively more dangerous.
I think it’s because car deaths are just so normalized that most people are numb to them. It’s kinda like that iconic Joker monologue about how it’s “all according to the plan”. People are afraid of exemplary things, not the mundane things that will actually kill them.
The first time I went skydiving, my instructor was a retired aircraft mechanic. He said something along the lines of “People always ask me why I’d want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. I tell them that I worked on planes for 30 years, and there is no such thing as a perfectly good airplane.”
Used to think it was statistically safe, then 737MAX crashes happened. Not trusting any airplane manufacturer any more.
Sounds like my dad, who after working as a computer programmer consultant since the early 70s, has become a Luddite. I wonder what a railroad engineer would tell your father.
It would not take much for a boiler on a train to blow, I’m sure there were all sorts of corners cut.
Do Diesel engines even use boilers? I know electric ones don’t. You don’t see a whole lot of functioning steam engines these days. They are neat though. Noisy AF.
I thought you were talking back in the day when you referenced railroad engineers talking to op’s father. Ie even way back when the people that ran old steam locomotives had the same opinion.
Funny enough my FIL was a train engineer for steam engines but transitioned to maintaining boilers at a hospital as most steam engines were being phased out early in his career.
My dad is the opposite of a Luddite. At 88, he still works for the airplane manufacturer, builds his own computers, and is getting into VR.
The FRA (federal railway administration) is scary. I would trust a train for sure.
Wasn’t everybody saying the opposite like 3 months ago?
The regulation on passenger rail is MUCH stronger then on freight.
That’s freight rail. Freight rail is a full blown late-stage capitalist hellscape. Aging infrastructure that hasn’t seen maintenance since the New Deal, companies that refuse to update equipment because paying out lawsuits when it breaks is cheaper, overworked employees who aren’t even allowed to call out sick, etc…
Compared to that, passenger rail is a fucking pipedream.
But doesn’t Amtrak share the same rails with freight? Sure maybe the trains themselves are better maintained but if the rails themselves are in bad shape the train won’t get far.
Well I guess it’s not mechanic failures of the train that derails them.
Perhaps, but you don’t have as far to fall.
Ergo, less time to contemplate your last moments. I like it.
Earlier this year a bunch of people got stuck on a 4 hour Amtrak ride for like 18+ hours, without power, toilets or water. Were told they couldn’t leave and not allowed/able to transfer to another train.
I’d rather just die in an incredibly rare plane crash than trust AmTrak to get me across the country in days versus a flight which can get me there in hours.
They need budget to actually upgrade their fleet.
That’s happened multiple times with planes, not just once last year.
It happened as recently as last month.
Here are more:
I could keep going, but this is hard on mobile.
Point is, that happens multiple times per year with planes.
Once you’ve seen the sausage made it’s hard to love sausage. Doesn’t mean the sausage is terrible, it just makes you think of watching it get made.
Story may have a bit of “then everyone clapped” vibes, but I can definitely get down with more trains.
Odelay42@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Sure, but… commercial airliners almost never crash?
LillyPip@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Most planes in general don’t crash, fwiw. Most trains and cars don’t, either.
But would you rather your Uber was a Camry or a Lada Nova?
Odelay42@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Planes are vastly safer than trains.
“Passenger vehicles are by far the most dangerous motorized transportation option compared. Over the last 10 years, passenger vehicle death rate per 100,000,000 passenger miles was over 20 times higher than for buses, 17 times higher than for passenger trains, and 595 times higher than for scheduled airlines.”
…nsc.org/…/deaths-by-transportation-mode/
PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Worth noting that the per-mile and per-trip stats are different. Planes have low per-mile rates because nobody sane is using a plane to get across town. They only use planes for long-distance trips where driving/taking the train isn’t feasible. So by default, planes will have low per-mile rates because virtually every trip is a high mileage event. In short, planes drastically water down their per-mile averages.
When you look at it from a per-trip viewpoint, cars are safer. Which makes sense. You drive to work hundreds of times per year, but maybe ride a plane twice? So a single car crash is going to be a drop in the bucket when compared to the thousands of car trips you’ve taken in your life, but a single plane crash will be a massive spike in the numbers.
LillyPip@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
That’s true in general. Planes are very safe overall.
My father has some airlines he’s okay with and some he won’t fly under any circumstances. I’m not talking about overall statistics, but what he knows about the industry’s practices, including mechanical and pilot issues.
Just my .02$
lloram239@feddit.de 9 months ago
That’s a bit of a myth. Large commercial planes are very save, that’s true. Small planes and helicopters on the other side can be very dangerous, as they fly around in far less controlled situations. They are so dangerous in fact that being a pilot is one of the most dangerous jobs around, only behind logging.
LillyPip@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Yes, sorry, I meant commercial planes. I should have clarified.
nilaus@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Niva🤩
deweydecibel@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I wouldn’t care because I understand how probability works.
LillyPip@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
When I’m driving down the highway, I spend as little time as possible next to semi-trailers because I’ve met loads of drivers and know how many are on heavy drugs or haven’t slept for far too long so they can meet their deadlines.
Probability-wise, it’s safe, but I don’t like it. Not everything is about raw numbers, Mr Spock.
hddsx@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
1NR is trying hard to change that