Close Menu
Technology Mag

    Subscribe to Updates

    Get the latest creative news from FooBar about art, design and business.

    What's Hot

    How WIRED Analyzed the Epstein Video

    July 31, 2025

    Join Us for WIRED’s AI Power Summit

    July 31, 2025

    What Your Nighttime Breathing Says About Your Health

    July 31, 2025
    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
    Subscribe
    Technology Mag
    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram YouTube
    • Home
    • News
    • Business
    • Games
    • Gear
    • Reviews
    • Science
    • Security
    • Trending
    • Press Release
    Technology Mag
    Home » Don’t Let the Boeing Headlines Fool You. Air Travel Is Really Very Safe
    Gear

    Don’t Let the Boeing Headlines Fool You. Air Travel Is Really Very Safe

    News RoomBy News RoomMarch 16, 20243 Mins Read
    Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Reddit WhatsApp Email

    What the hell is going on up there in the sky?

    The incidents feel like they started in January, when a door plug blew out of a midair Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft operated by Alaska Airlines. Ensuing investigations have led to a series of revelations about a faltering safety culture at Boeing and its contractors. Then the creepy headlines kept coming. Just this month, a wheel fell off a United Airlines jetliner as it took off from San Francisco; flames shot out of an United flight’s engine as it left Houston, Texas; another United flight ran off the runway in Houston as it came in to land; and a Boeing 787 Dreamliner operated by the Chilean airline Latam and bound for Auckland, New Zealand, suddenly lost altitude while midair, injuring dozens of passengers.

    The incidents are unsettling. “The public has every right to be alarmed,” says Daniel Kwasi Adjekum, a former Ghana Air Force squadron commander who later flew Boeing 737 aircraft and now teaches aviation safety as a professor at the University of North Dakota.

    But data, stringently collected by the US Federal Aviation Administration and other global regulators, suggests that commercial flight is really very safe—and has even gotten safer over just the past two decades. “Statistics don’t show any significant abnormality,” Adjekum says. “Millions of flights are operated by airlines all over the world every day, and passengers get from A to B safely.”

    The incidents might just feel as if they’re coming fast because the media has been primed to report on the sort of scary but non-fatal screw-ups that happen when humans are operating any kind of system—and particularly those involving Boeing aircraft. But redundancy is always built into aviation systems, so that, say, losing one wheel doesn’t lead to a horrific crash.

    But that kind of public attention can actually be helpful to the aviation industry, Adjekum says: “When the media throws a spotlight, it forces all of us within the aviation industry to be extra cautious,” he says. “We go back to the drawing table, and we use the data collected to improve safety.”

    The US hasn’t seen a fatal commercial aircraft incident since 2018, when one passenger died onboard a Southwest Airlines flight after part of an engine broke off and shattered a cabin window. Before that, no one had died onboard a US flight since 2009.

    “Aviation in the US was the safest mode of transportation in 2023,” says Hassan Shahidi, the president and CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation, a nonprofit research and advocacy group.

    Experts attribute much of the US commercial aviation industry’s remarkable record of success to its approach to transparency. In the 1990s, the FAA began to reorient its safety programs around the idea that anyone in aviation—manufacturers, manufacturing line workers, air traffic controllers, pilots, crew members, maintenance people—should be able to report on their own mistakes without facing career-ending repercussions.

    Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit Email
    Previous Article20 Great Deals on Air Purifiers, Vacuums, and Bluetooth Speakers
    Next Article US prosecutors are investigating how Meta platforms played a part in illegal drug sales

    Related Posts

    Google’s Newest AI Model Acts like a Satellite to Track Climate Change

    July 31, 2025

    This Smart Basketball Tracks Data About Every Shot. It Could Be Headed to the NBA

    July 31, 2025

    How Apple’s New Spotlight Compares to Raycast

    July 31, 2025

    15% Off Theragun Promo Code for August 2025

    July 31, 2025

    The Nvidia RTX 5060 Can’t Quite Beat AMD

    July 30, 2025

    Top Verizon Promo Codes and Deals for August 2025

    July 30, 2025
    Our Picks

    Join Us for WIRED’s AI Power Summit

    July 31, 2025

    What Your Nighttime Breathing Says About Your Health

    July 31, 2025

    Google’s Newest AI Model Acts like a Satellite to Track Climate Change

    July 31, 2025

    Steam and Itch.io Are Pulling ‘Porn’ Games. Critics Say It’s a Slippery Slope to More Censorship

    July 31, 2025
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Pinterest
    • Instagram
    • YouTube
    • Vimeo
    Don't Miss
    News

    Epic’s Game Store is bringing Fortnite back to Google Play

    By News RoomJuly 31, 2025

    Following an appeals court victory on Thursday, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney tweeted that “the Epic…

    Tesla’s ‘robotaxi’ rides in San Francisco have a human at the wheel

    July 31, 2025

    The 15 best back-to-school deals for college students

    July 31, 2025

    Thumby Color micro-review: a delightfully tiny GBA clone that doesn’t play Nintendo

    July 31, 2025
    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram Pinterest
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of use
    • Advertise
    • Contact
    © 2025 Technology Mag. All Rights Reserved.

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.