Is Flying Less Safe or Has the Media Figured Out You Love to Doomscroll?
Plus, Frontier blames boarding bottlenecks on a surprising source.
On March 18, a United Airlines flight to Osaka from San Francisco was taxiing on the runway when the pilots discovered an issue–the right engine was not working properly. They turned back to the gate and deplaned the passengers. A couple hours later they re-boarded the plane and took off for Osaka bringing all of the passengers safely across the Pacific to the popular Japanese city.
It was the type of incident that occurs on tarmacs, runways, and in air across the globe every day. Most might take the airline catching it and carefully returning as part of a mind-numbingly complex system that has made modern commercial air travel one of the safest forms of travel in human existence. After all, the risk of dying in a plane accident between the years 2018 and 2022 was 1 in 13.4 million. Out of the billions of people who flew last year, the sole fatal incident in commercial aviation was a Yeti Airlines crash in Nepal in which 72 people died.
However, that United Airlines flight turning back because of a mechanical issue made the news. The venerable San Francisco Chronicle covered the incident, devoting a full story to it. “United flight bound for Japan returns to gate in San Francisco with engine issues” reads the headline, and its tweet promoting it gave it an ominous twist: “The incident marks at least the 10th of its kind involving the U.S. airline in the past two weeks.”
Ever since a door went flying off a Boeing plane flown by Alaska Airlines back in January followed by the steady drumbeat of scandals out of Boeing–and witnesses planning to testify against the company dying–I’ve been asked more than ever about the safety of flying. On social media you’ll now often see the classic “If it ain’t Boeing, I ain’t going” transformed into “If it’s Boeing, I ain’t going.”
If you as a reader of the news found yourself wondering if things with commercial aviation were now a daily disaster, this Chronicle piece should have made you suspicious that perhaps something else is afoot. (Especially since the Chronicle piece was tagged with a Community Note that riposted: “Returning to the gate to investigate mechanical issues is not uncommon. So much so that the DOT has developed specific rules to cover it. UA35 – the flight in question – safely departed 4 hours and 51 minutes later.”)
I thought I’d use this week’s newsletter as an opportunity to give readers a peek into two worlds that are now overlapping to create this strange moment in aviation history. I want to try to address that question I keep getting asked–is flying still safe? And then if so, why does it feel like things have gotten dangerously out of hand?
I’m the Problem, It’s Me
The second question is easier to answer.
You often hear people who don’t like the stories that have been written about them dismiss coverage as “click-bait” (i.e. stories that are designed to bait readers into clicking on them because of misleading headlines, sensationalized stories, or quotes ripped from their context) created by digital news companies desperate for traffic. That could also be, and has been, a criticism lobbied at news organizations for their coverage of aviation mishaps.
That attack is a bit outdated as the business model for many news organizations has long since evolved from one based primarily on traffic. But, um, getting a lot of people to read your stuff has always been an expressed purpose of the newspaper industry. The same goes for Twitter, TikTok, etc. And if you’re a subscription-based publication, delivering stories your readers consider relevant is what keeps you afloat.
What is different now than 50, 70, 100, 200 years ago is we in the media industry know exactly the kinds of stories readers want. The Daily Mail has largely perfected this, so if you’re ever curious what most people want, just go to their homepage. Or, compare what The Washington Post or The New York Times wants its readers to read (the top of their page) versus what actually fills out the “Most Popular” sections of their websites.
When I was at The Daily Beast, we realized that readers loved news about national parks, airplane and cruise drama, and archaeology. So, I set alerts on Google and elsewhere and had great success being one of the first national outlets to cover what might have once just been local or niche stories. (The amount of people that go missing or die in national parks is astonishing. As are people getting thrown off planes for misbehaving.)
The point is that if you don’t like “the media,” directing your ire at editors and writers is mostly misplaced. They’re often just giving the people what they want while hoping and doing everything they can, from sharp headlines to tight copy, to get readers to read the “important” stuff.
And guess what, people LOVE reading about stuff going wrong with airplanes. So news organizations and social media companies have been giving readers what they want, turning routine airplane issues into news stories every day.
So, Are We All Just Paranoid?
That being said, there are things going on that legitimately heighten people’s fears around flying. To save space here, I’ll link to NPR’s timeline of how bad the past few months have been for Boeing from the grounding of Max 9’s after the door incident to allegations of cover-ups, fraud, and general shoddy work. Then there’s the issue with A320neo and new engines designed by Pratt & Whitney that have a problem with contaminated powdered metal and took a number of planes out of service. And, finally, there is the shortage at Air Traffic Control (ATC)–which has made recent near-misses of planes almost colliding on the runway especially worrisome.
Which leads us back to that first question: is flying still safe?
“It’s important to focus on the numbers,” explains Richard Aboulafia, a Managing Director at AeroDynamic Advisory, a boutique aerospace and defense management consultancy in a note to me this week. “Flying has never been safer. Indeed, it is the safest form of transportation ever created. It has been a very long time since anyone was killed flying in the US, or indeed, in most of the world, with many billions of people-miles flown.”
It’s a response I kept hearing over and over from industry experts–that the numbers don’t lie.
A few weeks ago, as the coverage of Boeing and airplanes reached a fever pitch, Courtney Miller of the aviation data and analysis firm Visual Approach, put together a shrewd document showing that despite all the press, Boeing and Airbus are pretty much equal when it comes to their safety records. It’s well worth a read in full.
I caught up with Miller this week on Zoom, and asked him his thoughts on whether the recent news should make travelers feel unsafe flying.
“It shouldn't,” he succinctly replied. “It's never been safer” to fly, he continued. “There is no method of transportation that's more closely watched, that is safer.” While many of the stories about issues with planes are legitimate, a lot of them likely stem from the reality that once you start looking around closely at these things you’re bound to find something.
Instead, like many I talked to in the industry, if anything were to worry him it’s not the machines themselves but the humans operating them and the ones conducting them from the ground. Over and over, the folks I talked to stressed that human error–specifically at the under-staffed ATC1–was the thing that they would worry about, if anything at all.
The other angle Miller pointed out was that unlike a few years ago, so many of these plane incidents have passenger video to accompany news stories–giving them a much more intense impact for consumers of all types of media.
“What would we think of the Alaska door plug incident if we did not have a picture from a cell phone in a video of a cell phone of the lights kind of whizzing by and somebody sitting next to that door as the airplane's in the air?” he asked aloud. It would have looked bad, but not been as big of a story.
I repeat none of this is to let Boeing off the hook on my end. There has clearly been a failure of executive teams and culture there, and given the deadly incidents in 2018 and 2019 with the Max this can’t be shrugged off. There clearly needs to be leadership change and hopefully the specter of a reactionary regulatory state will fix the issues in the supply chain and at Boeing itself. The government also needs to amend what is clearly a too-cozy relationship with the airline manufacturer and fix the flawed system of allowing Boeing and suppliers to “self-certify” their inspections.
Perversely, one of the best ways to show how safe these machines can be is to look at a disaster story from recent days. On Tuesday, a Singapore Airlines flight from London to Singapore experienced sudden extreme turbulence leading to the death of one passenger and severe injuries for a couple dozen. As the plane fell, the human bodies tossed in the air were no match and a number of passengers suffered brain and spine injuries.
The plane, meanwhile, landed fine.2
DEPARTMENT OF GRIEVANCES3
Barry Biffle (what a name!) is the CEO of Frontier Airlines. This week he spoke at a luncheon in NYC about an issue plaguing the airline industry. No, not any of the myriad ways Frontier can turn hell-ish, but “rampant abuse” of airport wheelchairs by those who don’t need them. It’s jamming up the boarding process, he says, with people using them to get fast-tracked at the airport but then not using them on arrival because there are no more perks at that point. “We are healing so many people,” he apparently joked. If it’s as abused as he claims, a crackdown should follow, especially since this hurts those who actually need it. But, it brings up a separate issue which is that the boarding and deplaning processes remain terrible.
Boarding being another form of ancillary revenue for airlines is an obvious culprit, so executives might want to look at that first. And while I know Americans don’t like airstairs, having a plane empty from both front and back really is so civilized and should be the norm in the American southwest, at least. Also, why haven’t we figured out how to attach two jet bridges to allow dual exits all the time?
I dislike the stranglehold Google has on our daily lives as much as the next guy. But Google Flights is a great product and has been for years. So much so I felt no remorse about abandoning once-clunky websites like Expedia or the airlines themselves. (Looking at you Iberia. Or, you, Southwest, which requires you to pick an airport and not a destination which sucks when they fly to multiple airports in one destination.) As somebody who flies from DCA to Providence frequently, I’m very happy about the news that Southwest will now appear on Google Flights.
Beds in Europe. What do Europeans, particularly Southern Europeans, have against big beds and duvets? From AirBnBs to nice houses, small beds and minimal fluffiness are the norm. Additionally, why are hotels in Europe still at it with the whole pushing two single beds together thing? I can feel the crack, and I’m no Princess and the Pea.
A fifth American was arrested in Turks & Caicos for ammo in their luggage. U.S. governors have sent a letter pleading with the Caribbean government for leniency. Sure, there’s been a change in rules this year where jail time is now a consequence instead of paying a fine. But if I can diligently make sure I don’t have a drop of water in my water bottle each time, surely folks can make sure they don’t have bullets?
TRAVEL INDUSTRY NEWS
Amtrak’s Acela and Alaska Airlines have both rolled out new dining options. For what it’s worth, I always thought Acela’s first class food was pretty good. Alaska will now offer hot meals (again) for sale in economy.
Speaking of Amtrak, I was just singing its praises the other day for how much better it is in terms of timeliness than a decade ago, but it seems things have, um, gone off the rails.
France released a postage scratch-and-sniff postage stamp that smells like a baguette.
The Justice Department is suing to break up Ticketmaster and parent company Live Nation, “accusing them of running an illegal monopoly over live events in America and asking a court to break up the system that squelches competition and drives up prices for fans.”
American Airlines has been accused of engaging in a Basic Economy “bait and switch” by hiding the fares under the “Main” cabin tag.
The Grand Canyon has seen more than 1,000 people go missing since 2018…
Summit season has commenced at Mt. Everest, and four climbers are already dead.
A Nickelodeon resort is coming to Orlando in 2026.
Which is why the recently passed re-authorization of the FAA was such a big deal. Although time will tell if it "fixes" the problem as there's a relatively long on-ramp to getting new hires on at ATC and in that time there will be more retirements etc.
It turns out that a human decision, to wear or not to wear seatbelts during hot meal contributed to the carnage, as unbuckled passengers were thrown into the air. Singapore Airlines has since tightened their rules.
For those who are new to this newsletter, this is the section where I ruminate on things recently in the news as relates to travel.