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Reading the thread under that suggests I will be starting an airline shitlist effective immediately.
by wrldos 4y ago
Reading the thread under that suggests I will be starting an airline shitlist effective immediately.
- Simon_O_Rourke 4y agoProper airlines only please.
- ramraj07 4y agoAre you implying Qatar isn’t a proper airline? Anyone who flies international often would likely rate it at the highest levels currently. My current lowest ranked crap airline is British. God have the Europeans grown lazy.
- bigDinosaur 4y agoCheck out the comments from the article. Of course most of us have no way of verifying that information.
- wrldos 4y agoI'd rather have a safe bad experience than a shiny plane crash.
- hackernewds 4y agoWhat plane crash?
- ChemSpider 4y agoThe 787 was less than 250 m above water, that was VERY close to crash.
- hef19898 4y agoThe only difference being at 600 feet above water, the olane could, and did, continue its journey. At zero feet, not so much.
- wtch98 4y agoThere's a difference between the onboard service and cabin (and god are BA shit), and the flight safety. That said BA earned a hell of a black mark when it chose to divert to Heathrow rather than Stansted or even Gatwick when its engine was on fire [1]. Not as much as when Air France decided to divert from Lebanon to Damascus in the middle of a civil war rather than Cyprus because it was cheaper [2] [1] https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/ba-flight-returns-to-heathrow-after-engine-catches-fire-minutes-after-taking-off-a3628601.html https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/ba-flight-returns-to-... [2] https://globalvoices.org/2012/08/26/france-an-epic-flight-from-paris-to-beirut-via-damascus/ https://globalvoices.org/2012/08/26/france-an-epic-flight-fr...
- trimbo 4y ago> That said BA earned a hell of a black mark when it chose to divert to Heathrow rather than Stansted or even Gatwick when its engine was on fire After declaring an emergency, if they landed at Heathrow, that was at the pilot's discretion or due to limiting factors like runway length at Gatwick and the weight of their plane. The article is light on detail but they circled over Kent as well, so the pilots must have thought it was safe after shutting down the engine.
- wtch98 4y agoIn the process dropping debris over one of the largest cities in Europe. Gatwick and Stansted can take any plane just as easily as Heathrow, but has less on ground resources to fix the plane.
- mpalfrey 4y agoRunway length at LGW is OK for a 777. I'd guess they knew it was safe and it's easier to deal with a plane full of pax at your originating airport than diverting to STN (where there's no BA ops) or LGW (BA have ops here so could have worked).
- darrenf 4y ago> STN (where there's no BA ops) BA did fly from STN in 2017, at the time of the incident - they served short haul tourist routes like PMI, AGP, FLR, IBZ.
- kkfdkerpoe 4y agoSafety and customer experience are two different things that may not correlate much most of the time. I'll rather have top quality pilots and maintenance than friendliest flight attendants if I have to choose between two.
- ExoticPearTree 4y agoI prefer a pleasant flight than to fly a shitty airline. And as a frequent flyer of European airlines for intercontinental flights, the quality of the flight experience pales in contrast with Qatar. You don't know how good the pilot is until it gets you out of a really bad situation that the AP cannot manage. Most airline pilots do very little actual flying: takeoffs mostly, and depending on how new the plane is and the type of runways they land on, some just use auto-land systems. You're most likely to find more experienced pilots flying small commercial planes without AP than actual proper airline pilots.
- piva00 4y ago> Most airline pilots do very little actual flying: takeoffs mostly, and depending on how new the plane is and the type of runways they land on, some just use auto-land systems. And that's precisely why I also care about pilot quality before how pleasant the service is. The moment something goes awry with the automated systems you better have a good crew flying your plane than a crew who's much more reliant on instruments and automation. It's like insurance, I'd rather choose to never have to use it but the moment I need it you bet I'll be very grateful that I preferred a very good coverage than the cheapest option out there.
- ramraj07 4y agoAgreed on most parts, but at some point you have to start deciding whether the safety tradeoff is worth it. You’re still more likely to die on the car ride to the airport than in the plane, yet we all do it still. And the “quality” of service is not just slightly off, it’s wildly off to the extent it genuinely distresses you even when everything is going right, leave alone the hell British creates if even something goes wrong. Again, until something actually crashes I’ll reserve judgement on whether the slight increase in supposed risk for the middle eastern airlines is even real.
- sschueller 4y agoWhat airline does not see pilots, crew and maintenance as just another cost point that needs optimization to the max in order to satisfy shareholders and investors?
- colechristensen 4y agoIn the US and plenty of places the airline regulations are strong and followed well. NTSB reports have nothing to do with shareholder value and FAA directives are followed. Not that there are no problems, but flying in the US is very safe.
- sschueller 4y agoBoeing 737 MAX disasters says otherwise, especially when after the first crash the decision was made not the ground all others which was clearly in favor of profits over safety. The accidents may not have been American airlines but it could have easily been.
- kqr 4y agoSouthwest. Honest answer.
- hackernewds 4y agoSouthwest is belabored by very strong unions. Unreasonable demands in reality from the pilots
- piva00 4y agoWhat are the unreasonable demands?
- Finn_ 4y agoSouthwest's pilots union has been somewhat weak with negotiations if anything. A lot of their pilots are super unhappy about it. The market is strong for pilots right now and they're behind their peers at the Big 3 by quite a bit in a lot of areas.
- tomashubelbauer 4y agoYou might be interested in https://airlinelist.com https://airlinelist.com which tracks accident statistics of many airlines. Made by Pieter Levels of the Nomadlist fame.
- detrites 4y agoThe problem with lists of major accidents is they aren't necessarily a predictor of future accidents, and in some cases may be the reverse. An airline suffering a major accident is likely to lead to a significant safety overhaul. What's needed is a service that tracks near misses or mistakes such as in this post, and their trend over time for each airline. An increase in frequency for a particular airline might well be usefully predictive.
- kqr 4y ago> The problem with lists of major accidents is they aren't necessarily a predictor of future accidents, and in some cases may be the reverse. An airline suffering a major accident is likely to lead to a significant safety overhaul. This should be a somewhat testable proposition, right? Does time since accident increase or decrease the probability of next accident? (Practically, plotting the distribution of inter-accident durations and seeing if the tail falls off exponentially, slower, or faster.)
- rob74 4y agoEmirates, no accidents? I would say this one (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirates_Flight_521 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirates_Flight_521) definitely qualifies as an accident, although the only fatality was an unfortunate firefighter...
- tomashubelbauer 4y agoI used the Feedback button in the bottom right to let Pieter know so that he can update the site. Thanks for letting me know!
- 4cao 4y ago
- madaxe_again 4y agoYou’ll have a very short list of carriers left not on the list, if any. Human error happens with much greater frequency in aviation than you might believe - I have experienced some absolutely hair-raising moments (watched Lufthansa lose a winglet on landing while the stewardess prayed, had an aerolinias argentinas flight take off with a luggage compartment still open, and a air Bishkek flight where the wheels locked on landing and we ground down the runway at sheremetyevo on hubs), and have been told tales of others by pilots that I wish I hadn’t been told. The thing is, most of the time, it’s nothing more than some scared passengers and a messed up schedule. “Almost” didn’t happen.
- abudabi123 4y agoTwo more to add to the list. Brand new passenger aircraft on final approach to landing and the control tower tells the pilot they've forgotten to lower the landing gears. Worse case outcome, clear good weather condition, passenger aircraft approaches landing and gets it wrong, crash and burn, passengers survive on the ground and some get runover by the fire trucks arriving on scene.
- madaxe_again 4y agoI’ve driven an airport fire appliance and that doesn’t surprise me in the slightest - I could not see a damned thing for 20 meters in front of me on the ground, as the window is a thick glass slit mounted above eye level, as it’s designed to be driven into and withstand a jet fuel fire - you have to stand and drive to see where you’re going - and that was in clear broad daylight.
- rich_sasha 4y agoHuman error is just part of it. Some environments foster correction of such errors, learning, experience-sharing, pay well for parts and maintenance, don't overwork their staff. Others not. I think for me such insights would be gold.
- wrldos 4y agoYeah I know a couple of pilots, one of whom does "flying scum buses" as he calls them to hot places around Europe and have a lot of horror stories. Nothing major: bits of planes falling off, people going bananas, near misses etc. I generally don't fly these days and haven't actually been in a plane for 20 years (ex wife couldn't fly due to med issue) but I need to get out there and would like to pick the least shitty solution.
- srvmshr 4y agoNot sure how far the information is true but I am told many Middle eastern carriers do not get sufficiently mature pilots & have to make do with junior ones. Or it could be possible that they compensate for some of the luxurious offerings with invisible cutting corners like pilot experience. Either way there seems to be a certain issue which needs addressing. I remember reading on HN where the pilot failed to timely rotate the plane when it was supposed to take off until it had overshot and apparently flew at 200+ kts after taking off from DBX at low altitude (75 ft) for about a mile, before climbing up & proceeding without incident to IAD [1][2]. Admiral Cloudberg blogged that Emirates 521 incident showed Emirates pilots seemed over-reliant on instrument for landing [3]. [1] https://avherald.com/h?article=4f24b2d7 https://avherald.com/h?article=4f24b2d7 [2] https://onemileatatime.com/news/emirates-terrifying-boeing-777-flight-washington/ https://onemileatatime.com/news/emirates-terrifying-boeing-7... [3] https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-reliability-trap-the-crash-of-emirates-flight-521-98397de8c34e https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-reliability-trap-the...
- ExoticPearTree 4y agoI don't know of a single airline not to have had any sort of incident. So you'll have to take the boat to cross the oceans next time you need to visit another contient :)