Over at Vox, Kelsey Piper lays down some stats on airline problems:
Are more planes having incidents than ever before? Or are we just hearing about more incidents? It’s mostly the latter.... The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which investigates aviation incidents and accidents, lists 12 incidents on commercial aircraft in the United States so far this year. Last year, during the same time period, there were 13 such incidents.
So the only reason we're hearing so much about airline incidents is because journalists are hopping onto even the most minor mishaps. Should they?
Here’s the question I struggle with as a journalist: Do we have some responsibility not to write such stories?
Journalists take accuracy very seriously. Every journalist I know works very hard not to publish a story that’s wrong — and if they did, they’d feel obliged to issue a correction. But it’s much less clear what our obligations are with stories that are completely true, and about a subject readers want to read about, but that paint for those readers a misleading picture of the world.
I'm glad Piper is asking this question, but I wish she didn't struggle with it. I think the answer is clear: Either stop reporting every incident or make sure to provide context when you do. Every time. To me this is nothing tricky. It's just Journalism 101.
Unfortunately, this still leaves us with a question. Piper says there have been 12 incidents this year compared to 13 last year over the same period. I wasn't quite able to replicate her numbers, but since it's Boeing jets that are making news, I figured it was better just to search for Boeing incidents anyway.
The overall trend is down, but since the pandemic drop in 2020 there's been a steady rise. The number of incidents is now near the peak of the past 20 years. So maybe there's something going on after all?
In fairness, this is the problem with context. There are lots of ways to look at data and it's not always easy to figure out which is really the most descriptive. In this case, there's also the fact that "incident" means anything from an airplane exploding in flight to a flight attendant twisting an ankle in bad weather. It would take some real digging to figure out if Boeing jets are having more mechanical issues than past years, and it might even be impossible. After all, even if there's a mechanical failure, is it because the plane is defective or because a maintenance worker didn't do their job right? Who knows?
It's never easy, is it? Still, I think I'd pretty much agree with Piper: there's not a lot of evidence that Boeing is having any more flight issues than in the past, and that's true if you look at every incident or only serious ones.
While Boeing has a lot to answer to, I am disappointed by all the press reports on problems with Boeing airplanes that were manufactured years ago. These issues are primarily on the airlines’ maintenance programs, not Boeing.
The latest Boeing whistle blower was not a structural design engineer, but a contract quality engineer. His criticisms of Boeing violating their quality procedures should be taken seriously, his criticisms of Boeing’s structural analysis not as much.
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Seems like at minimum you should correct these numbers for the total fleet size, no?
Or the number of flights taken. Or... the pandemic dip was HUGE. "Early March 2020 saw 10% of all flights cancelled compared to 2019. As the pandemic progressed, 40–60% fewer flight movements were recorded in late March with international flights affected the most. By April 2020, over 80% flight movements were restricted across all regions. Research shows that world recovery of passenger demand to pre-COVID-19 levels is estimated to take 2.4 years (recovery by late 2022), with the most optimistic estimate being 2 years (recovery by mid-2022), and the most pessimistic estimate 6 years (recovery in 2026)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_COVID-19_pandemic_on_commercial_air_transport
Talk about airplane safety is in any case silly. What do I care if it is one millionth or two millionths as dangerous as the car on the other side. I fly as little as possible but if I do, and also have a choice of airplanes (which I never had, but anyway), I'd look only at CO2 per passenger mile. That being said, I might also opt for one with a door that might blow off, if the manufacturer then gives me fifty grand to compensate me for my little trauma, or my kids a million each if I'm sucked into the atmosphere.
"...What do I care if it is one millionth or two millionths as dangerous as the car on the other side. ..."
More like a factor of 600 per passenger mile.
The problem is innumeracy - there really would not be so much confusion on her part if a numerate and statistically informed understanding rather than an innumerate story-telling anectdote driven mode was used.
Drum's great strength is fundamental numeracy (although he does off the rails when he gets into where data naivete or econometric technicity upends [see inflation]) - still it is a great step up from typical maths innumerate data-innumerate journalism-by-anectdote gives
This really sums up my problem with “ the news” these days.
What would Edward R Murrow do?
Signed: Old Fart
The title of this blog could've been "Either Stop Reporting Every Incident or Make Sure to Provide Context When You Do. With Cats."
"The number of incidents is now near the peak of the past 20 years. So maybe there's something going on after all?".
The last point actually does not seem to be far above the mean for the whole interval. Assuming that the whole array is random, what is the probability of that point? Kevin draws a dotted line which is presumably the least-squares linear fit, but how significant is that?
Kevin frequently tries to draw conclusions from the latest value in a noisy series, often with the use of arbitrary trend lines - or curves. Maybe he needs to go back and get his PhD in statistics - or does he already have one according to chatbots?
Of course media reporters do some of the same things and then often go on to read the minds of market participants as to the reasons behind slight changes in inflation rate, for example.
Vast majority of the incidents are either maintenance related or air traffic / tower incidents on the ground. Fleet age may have something to do with this as airlines facing increased demand, are not able to get replacement aircraft fast enough, and are holding onto older jets longer than expected. Going to Europe this fall, we were on a 25 year old United 777, and flew back on a Austrian Air 767 (of unknown age, but likely 20+ years). I am sure both airlines are waiting for deliveries of new jets to replace these old birds (and have them pass on to cargo service).
Boeing fucked up completely with the 737-Max, the door plug fiasco, production issues with the 777x and 787s, and the general perception of poor quality control. Good news for them is that the airlines will buy what ever they produce right now. They had better fixed themselves before demand drops off and Airbus clobbers them.
"Either stop reporting every incident or make sure to provide context when you do. Every time. To me this is nothing tricky. It's just Journalism 101."
Deep bow to honor the sentiment.
Context matters.
Verification matters.
Otherwise, it's not journalism.