this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024

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596

Whistleblower 'would not' put family on Boeing 787 jet (www.bbc.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[+] [email protected] 193 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (11 children)

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[–] [email protected] 74 points 9 months ago

Boeing is the only company actually trying to reach their net zero target. Once no Boeing plane are flying anymore that's it, no more CO2 emissions

[–] [email protected] 46 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (5 children)

Silver lining: less flights booked means less emissions for the environment.

[–] Kanzar 27 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Iirc the increase in people driving instead of flying due to 911, lead to more accidents and deaths. :(

[–] [email protected] 35 points 9 months ago (1 children)

But more deaths leads to fewer emissions! A bright side!

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That's not great... I can only hope more people opt for trains instead this time.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (5 children)

If we had high speed rail, I’d absolutely love to take a train to just go places, but cross country trains in the US take absolutely forever. If you aren’t in a hurry, sure, great option, cheap, but doesn’t really work well for vacations or emergencies or whatever when you have very limited time.

For example, Chicago to Seattle takes 46 hours by train but 30 hours by car. Even with stops for food, gas, and bathroom, even staying somewhere for the night, you aren’t adding 16 hours on.

https://www.amtrak.com/empire-builder-train

We really need to invest more in high speed rail.. like everywhere here. Until then, unfortunately, I doubt people will shift that way overall.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Maybe even a return to train travel.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

I hope that prompts more funding into Amtrak if people do opt for that!

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I think the problem is that this will likely lead to more driving instead of flying.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

That’s not a silver lining at all. Jets are actually very fuel efficient compared to driving when they’re full of passengers.

One less plane in the air could potentially mean 300+ more cars on the road. Not a great outcome.

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[–] emergencyfood 34 points 9 months ago (8 children)

Having the public lose trust in the safety of flying is something I absolutely want to happen. This will have devastating effects on carbon emissions, and push more people (and governments) towards trains.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

Devastating is a bit of an exaggeration with it being responsible for a whooping 3% (at most) of emissions and arguably helping raise the albedo a bit with their contrails.

So it would help a bit, it wouldn't be a game changer though (except if you live near an airport, sound is another pollution that's often ignored).

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The government has already stepped in several times. If you’re in the mood to get mad, read up on the results of these interventions. Basically, Boeing was almost forced to deal with actual oversight, but was able to convince the government at the last minute that they could handle the oversight themselves internally (thanks to the wonderful process of lobbying of course)

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago

The above comment means to nationalize the industry I think. That's what it sounds like to me, and I agree it'd be a good step. In addition to safety, it'd stop them from their bullshit price gouging.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea 27 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Why promote flying? Why not invest heavily in really fast ground transportation? Let's build a bullet train between major hubs so people have a choice. If there's a serious competitor to flying, Boeing will have to improve or they'll lose a ton of business.

If the government takes over airlines or airplane manufacturing, we'll just end up with lots of cronyism.

I say start with LA to SF and LA to LV. The current infra there sucks, and there's a lot of worthwhile stops along the way. Then perhaps upgrade NYC to DC and related lines. It'll be incredibly expensive to roll out, but should be very cheap to run and maintain.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, here we go. Trains are so much more pleasant. If they weren't 10 times as slow I would never fly.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 9 months ago

If they weren’t 10 times as slow I would never fly.

We have the tech for high speed rail, we just refused to build it because of lobbying (bribery), regulatory capture, and forced dependence on cars and planes.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

To me at least the speed isn’t a problem. I’d much rather take a 2 day Amtrak (in sleeper) than an 8 hour plane.

The problem is the pricing, and also how much it fluctuates due to the extremely low capacity (one train a day…)

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (2 children)

It's not about trust in flying it's about trust in Boeing. Slight difference.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

so, it's about trust in half of flying

[–] Croquette 7 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Boeing was being brash until they got caught with their pants down.

You know for sure that shit happens at other manufacturers but they kept it low, and they probably are tightening their QA to not fall to scrutiny.

I hope that this will trigger heavy scrutiny from the different bodies across the world to make sure that this shit doesn't happen anymore, but that hope is naive.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago

That seems to be a rather unfair assertion to make. Boeing seems to be unique amongst the big airlines in having these problems; and they're relatively new problems for them too, in the grand scheme of things.

I've never once heard of systemic issues of this sort at Airbus, and it seems lazy to do a "they're all the same!" when this really does seem to be a Boeing problem first and foremost.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

This happens every time a company focus shifts from building a good product to appeasing the shareholder gods. Capitalism kills.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago

Boeing isn't an airline...

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The government already heavily subsidizes the "struggling" industry (that somehow still makes outrageous profits). The government really should exercise more control over the industry, given that they (we) pay a very high annual price for it to exist.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Come on, it only effects like 1/4 of the economy.

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[–] [email protected] 92 points 9 months ago (2 children)

"If it's Boing, I'm not going"

[–] [email protected] 74 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Boing

When the plugdoor hinge consultant is asked how to spell Boeing

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago

Took the "open-door policy" too literally.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I'm just waiting for the warcries of WWIII so I can buy Boeing stock as it bottoms out before daddy Warbucks saves them, and hopefully me! 🤞

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Boeing's hitman:

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I've had a lot of trouble searching for a concrete answer to this, but does anyone know what percentage of commercial jets in the US are made by Boeing? I know it's a duopoly between them and Airbus, but to what extent is Boeing's domination?

[–] AlecSadler 12 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Unsubstantiated guess, but based on a cursory search for flights on Delta, it seems like 90% are Boeing.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

2 years old, but should be somewhat indicative. A lot of em seem to be 50/50 Airbus/Boeing (except Southwest, yikes), but anecdotally I’ve flown 4 times and it’s always been a Boeing.

edit: hey don’t downvote the guy I’m replying to. if you follow the steps he did you’ll come to the same conclusion. despite the makeup of their fleet, the majority of flights being offered (at least within the US) are on boeings.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It makes the most sense for a company to spread their risk amongst as many suppliers as possible if their entire business relies on the performance of those suppliers.

Thinking about it, IT hardware and networking doesn't ever seem to do this. Maybe that's because it's lots of items working together to create a system instead of multiple discrete systems.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago

It also makes sense for a company to reduce the number of different makes and models of aircraft so that a pilot can move from one to another without too much retraining, so they can reduce the size of spare parts inventories, service more aircraft at fewer locations, stuff like that.

And using different vendors is absolutely a thing in IT systems: https://www.telcion.com/blog/security-vendors-is-it-better-to-have-one-or-multiple

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

We've got a turd in the punch bowl

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