I can see something like this being the final straw for corporate America protecting Trump. It would have a ripple effect. How many incidents can happen before Americans legit stop flying? I know tons of people that haven’t flown since 9/11. Even though it’s safer than driving, people are just terrified of dying in a plane crash.
You may know a lot of people who aren’t flying, but every flight I’ve taken in the last year has been at least 90% full, with most at nearly full capacity.
While I was on my most recent flight to DCA (2 days before the crash), I was actually thinking about and having trouble remembering the last time that a US carrier had a catastrophic accident.
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theres a pilot shortage so this isnt surprising flights are packed
guy I used to work with just got his airbus cert and hes making more than I do, I wouldnt have been able to pass FAA medical exam due to bad eyesight and history of depression, but I’m really envious of him. seems like a cool job (with dogshit hours though)
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There’s definitely a number where people stop flying. Maybe it’s 3 plane crashes, maybe it’s 1,000. But there is a number where the airlines are like “We need to fix this before Trump and Elon make it worse.” Fixing it because it’s the right thing to do is never gonna happen.
I don’t think this is true. There are hundreds of car crashes every day and nobody stops driving.
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So you think if there’s a plane crash once a week, it’s not going to have an impact on people flying?
people would stop flying but then airlines just go out of business/merge have fewer flights, they get to fire people
there isn’t going to be a we need to fix this before anyone makes it worse, it’s going to be adjusting to it being worse
It would but that won’t happen. Flying is insanely safe. Accidents are incredibly rare. This is nothing more than a tiny statistical cluster in random noise.
Even if it did happen it would lower numbers but I would bet not that much. People need to fly.
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doge is going to rewrite the aviation system
call it a hunch but I think we’re gonna see more
don’t need too many more for people to basically stop, they all get media attention, car wrecks do not
You articulated what I said better. People that fly regularly have no idea how apprehensive it is for people that only fly once in a while. Cars aren’t exploding and killing 250 people in one shot. Add in people feel like they are in control when driving.
Sure but only about 20% of people have a fear of flying.
We’ve been massacring tens of thousands of people in cars every year for over a hundred years. We’re used to it.
Edit: intended to reply to thread, not matty
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But like @wheatrich said, car accidents don’t make the news. And as the election has shown, people react to what’s on the magic box in their living room. It doesn’t have to be a significant number for the airlines to push back on DOGE running things.
With driving people can delude themselves into thinking that they are good, careful drivers, so it won’t happen to them. Can’t replicate that thought process for a commercial flight.
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There is no amount of plane crashes that will ever realistically happen even in the worst timelines that’ll keep a meaningful number of people from flying. It is an absolutely essential part of modern life, same as driving cars. It could be orders of magnitude more dangerous and flights will continue to be packed. Humans are so thirsty for travel that they literally took covered wagons and forded rivers and caught dysentery and even that wouldn’t stop them.
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I know this is the cause of fear of flying. That was not my point. My point as accidents are super rare, even if they happened more the vast majority of people have no fear of flying so it wouldn’t have a major effect on numbers.
Right. A bunch of pilots took early retirement at the beginning of COVID and obviously you can’t just push a button on LinkedIn and hire a thousand pilots at a time. Passenger numbers are now higher than before COVID, fewer pilots means fewer flights, so the percentage of occupied seats is way higher.
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And of course more crowded planes mean anxious flyers are just that much more anxious. Nobody reacts well to literally being packed in like sardines.
I routinely hit 120 flights a year before Covid and didn’t think anything of it, and I can’t fucking stand it now.
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Focussing just on the US, there would have to be 700 crashes per year of the type we saw last week to equal the carnage on the roads. Boeing only makes about 350 commercial aircraft per year. We’d really have to ramp up production to keep up with demand if people wanted to keep flying.