With the recent crash of the Nepalese airplane, I saw a lot of comments on :reddit-logo: talking about how Nepal has poor safety standards, bad piloting certifications, and how they buy second to third hand planes that they don’t maintain.
I’m sure that has nothing to do with capitalism.
But I also saw comments about how Euro and American standards are much, much better. I’m sure that’s true to some extent, given how many airplanes fly over these regions with so few incidents. But… I don’t really see why.
Wouldn’t the center of capitalism be more aggressive with its cost-cutting measures and safety shortcuts? It would improve their profit margins and given the Tendency, they have to take every chance they get, right?
Are we just waiting for a huge, huge sudden spike in airplane crashes as these measures start catching up?
Or is government regulation (and enforcement) still somehow strong in this industry?
Small plane accidents are more due to the demographics than their designs. With GA in the US it's basically the same 5 mistakes over and over again and we keep making them. It's just that the folks who think it's fine to fly right through a thunderstorm don't tend to make it to the airlines.
Yes, that's true, but there's also the fact that an Airbus 380 is just inherently going to have a better time in said thunderstorm for the same reason it's better to be on the Queen Mary in a storm instead of the world's best built ocean racing yacht.
True. It's about knowing the limits of the plane. Plenty of bourgeois boomers get themselves and their families killed every year with their macho attitudes.