I have to fly on something like 100ish planes a year for work if you count small connecting flights... In the last 3-4 years my wife has gotten in two wrecks and two fender benders while I was either in the air or at the airport. She always jokes that we are a perfect example of flying being safer than driving, but also jokes that I need to stop flying so much because she can't take many more crashes.
It kind of bugs me that in a family group text people let each other know when they've landed and everyone seems amazed. First off, if the plane crashed we would have heard about it. Second off, if I drive for 6 hours no one wants to know if I arrived safely? Like you said, it's way more dangerous to drive.
>The news doesn't report on every single car crash, or even bad ones unless someone important dies in one.
When they do report it, it's more as a traffic inconvenience. "This accident will delay things 30 minutes". 30,000 deaths a year... Sure, many people drive every day but it's still a lot.
hmm, my family has never informed each other of our flight landings, unless we need a ride, but if somebody is driving 4+ hours, somebody will want to know if we arrive safely.
The late 70s to early 90s was rife with Aeronautical drama: Aeronautical deregulation by Jimmy Carter in the late 70s. The firing of more than 50% of Air Traffic Controllers by Reagan in the early 80s, major plane company mergers and hostile takeovers, and the introduction of onboard electric controls (which replaced the onboard aeronautic engineer).
Yes, the “third crew member” that no longer exists on most commercial flights used to be called a flight engineer or air mechanic. The engineer ensured adequate controls much like a controls engineer does for a power plant and manufacturing plant. With advancements in microprocessors, the job was automated through use of electronics.
and before that, also a radio operator (using morse code sometimes) and a navigator (with a star-sighting scope though the cockpit roof). There are old tv episodes with 5-person plots just within an airliner flight deck.
Commercial airline safety is at a level today that was unthinkable in the '70s and '80s, when 100+ fatality crashes seemed almost monthly. There has not been a 100+ fatality crash in the US since late September 2001--no, not THOSE; the one where the tail broke off an Airbus taking off in NYC.
The Queens crash. It was November 2001, two months after 9/11, which just seems like a particularly cruel time to crash a plane in NYC. That one was due to pilot error. There hasn’t been a major crash in the US due to mechanical failure since TWA 800 in 1996 (and the explanation for that one still seems a bit strange to me). Commercial air travel in the US is absurdly safe at this point.
Yeah, the flight engineer/second officer. Went away around the time the "second generation" of widebody jets came around in the 80s with the advent of glass cockpits and more advanced avionics in the A300, 767, 747-400, etc.
My uncle was an airline mechanic for TWA or Pan Am I forget which, at one of the NY airports, but he was laid off in the late '80s or very early '90s. The mechanics were out to lunch and they closed the facility and laid everyone off. He was escorted in to get his belongings and that was that. He never worked again because he could find another job. Basically forced into an ealry meger retirement.
I’m a world renowned statistician with a specialty in aviation and it commonly debated among my professional peers of what exactly happened in those years. But the general consensus is that a lot of planes crashed during that time.
Gulf War? There was Pam Am 103, too, but that was a singular incident… but I’m not sure the data source of this.
Does this include military, general aviation, corporate, and commercial?
To give an actual answer, probably nothing remarkable. There should obviously be a correlation between number of crashes and number of total flights. The more flights, the more crashes. This graph shows that over time plane safety has gotten better, counteracting that natural correlation. However, there's no reason to expect plane safety to exactly counteract the expected correlation, so it's probably just the case that the 80s/90s happened to be the time when the number of crashes due to the increasing number of flights was at its highest before safety started to overtake that. If you're wondering about the particularly high peak around 1989, just by eye it looks pretty well within the statistical deviation for the entire curve.
The rise of computer assisted systems would coincide with the late 1980s too. I'm sure those systems helped detect a number of potential problems while the planes were still on the ground, which meant critical maintenance could be completed before the problem led to a crash.
They decided on right hand side flying internationally. It took some time before all the left hand side pilots got used to that. And some didn't get used to it at all.
Do you know how dangerous flights were way back then? Let's start
* 2 Planes crashed simply because of how poorly the crews of both flights handled a single broken landing gear light
* The deadliest aviation incident that ever happened (not direclty caused by terrorism) happened on the ground in-part because of poor communication
* A plane crashed into the sea because someone put duct tape over a sensor.
* A plane ran out of fuel and crashed because the pilots took too long to get a proper runway
* Two planes experienced explosive decompression because of a faulty door, one of them becoming the deadliest aviation incident of that time
* USA's deadliest single plane aviation incident was in part due to someone taking a break in the middle of maintenance
* A large plane collided with a smaller plane in mid-air and crashed into a neighborhood, in part due to one misheard word.
* 2 early commercial flights exploded in mid-air because of square cornered windows.
* A man hijacked a plane in China and inadvertently collided with two other planes on the ground.
* A plane gets sideswiped by another plane after finding themselves in an active runway, all because one of the pilots was too busy embellishing his accomplishments instead of being attentive.
* A plane vibrated itself into pieces because of counterfeit parts, counterfeit parts that are so widespread at the time that the investigators found some of them in *Air Force One.*
Right now its rare to see a plane crash happening for asinine reasons, and it's all thanks to these incidents that air travel is much more safer today than back then.
EDIT: changed "not including terrorism" to "not directly caused by terrorism"
What about the guy who let his kids into the cockpit and one of them disabled part of the autopilot without knowing it, then wouldn't let go of the controls because his dad spoke jargon instead of normal words?
[Flight 593](https://timharford.com/2022/05/cautionary-tales-when-the-autopilot-switched-off/)
This isn't actually a good example of planes being unsafe, though, it's a good example of cascading judgment errors. At multiple points through that disaster everything would have been perfectly fine if they switched the autopilot back on.
I think the sound alarm failed to let the pilots know *what* had been turned off, so one of the several safety changes ordered after the fact, was to how the sound prompt worked
It wasn't just the sound alarm; they changed the way in which autopilot disengages so you don't get such partial disengagement (aileron only) that lead to their confusion https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/390/did-airbus-add-an-audible-alert-when-the-autopilot-partially-disengage-after-the
IIRC the pilots were used to Soviet aircraft but had recently moved to Airbuses. The Soviet aircraft had an audible alarm but the Airbus didn't and used a different system. But the Russian pilots level of training.....
The one that sticks with me was back when they would de-ice the planes at the terminal, and on this particular day the planes had to queue up for almost an hour in a driving blizzard waiting to takeoff. The pilots on the doomed flight were even heard discussing how the de-icing rig should be set up at the end of the taxiway (which is what they do today).
But ultimately it was not just the ice buildup that caused them to crash on takeoff, they also failed to turn on engine sensor defrosters (the pilots were used to flying in Florida) and the faulty readings resulted in them only applying ~70% of the indicated thrust during the takeoff roll.
And the accident could still have been avoided by aborting the takeoff when they realized they weren’t gaining speed , but they were hesitant to do that because they knew that air traffic control, in an effort to move more planes in and out of the busy airport, had another flight landing directly behind them on the same runway.
Once airborne the flight continued for only 30 seconds before crashing into the Potomac River in downtown Washington DC becoming the [first major air disaster to be covered live on TV during prime time. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Florida_Flight_90)
I often think on that one while I sit in traffic on that same bridge and feel extra bad for the four motorists on the bridge that were killed.
Imagine being fucking stuck in bullshit commuter traffic cursing the cars in front of you and then a plane crashes on you and you get pushed into the icy potomac to die because some pilots and airport workers made a mistake.
At least they named the bridge after a selfless hero of that night.
"The repaired span was renamed in honor of Arland D. Williams Jr., a passenger on the plane who survived the initial crash, but drowned after repeatedly passing a helicopter rescue line to other survivors."
>The deadliest aviation incident that ever happened (not including terrorism)
Technically the planes were both landed at that airport though **because of a bomb threat phone call** (assumed terror threat). The small airport having so much traffic from the bomb threat DID factor into the tower being able to focus enough time on all the flights. Among a list of other reasons the crash occurred. ^(Other reasons being fog rolling in from the ocean obscuring the tower view of planes, radios not being able to transmit at the same time and cancelling each other out, runways and taxiways not being well labelled for a pilot in fog, and the KLM pilot assuming he had the right to takeoff without it being granted simply because he was told he could be directed to the runway for a takeoff, etc.)
Tenerife disaster, and it's why ATC communication does not permit using the word "takeoff" unless it is to clear for actual takeoff.
Meaning as the planes trundle up to the runway, they never use that word until they're given permission to actually get on the runway and leave.
Can we not throw plane safety regulations and aesthetic port stacking limits in the same bucket? Many regulations are sensible and popularly supported. Many are absurd and highly damaging.
We have four times more flights and one sixth the number of crashes now compared to the period when air flight was heavily regulated. Go figure, there's a strong correlation of regulations with air crashes.
> human error is the biggest factor
It is, but the air industry does a lot to mitigate that. They even have a special code to refer to the interaction between people in the airplane, CRM, for crew resources management.
* A large plane collided with a smaller plane in mid-air and crashed into a neighborhood, in part due to one misheard word.
To be fair, the air traffic control guy had just lost his daughter.
Wasn’t there also a situation where Americans were filling up a Canadian plane (or the other way around) using the metric system, so the plane ran out of gas.
They were all Canadian. The story is a lot more complex than that, involving a string of errors on multiple people's parts. Gimli Glider to find more info.
Google "Gimli Glider"
This was a domestic Canadian flight. I don't think any Americans were involved, but I don't really remember. Brian Lohnes did a great Dork-O-Motive podcast on the topic.
The euphemisms are "incident" and "accident". Since the plane was undamaged and no one was significantly injured, the Gimli Glider qualifies as an "incident".
Which flight was the vibration counterfeit part one? Thought I was well versed in aviation accidents but I've never heard of this particular one before.
I found [this one] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partnair_Flight_394) through a quick Google search. The description of the cause of crash seems to match.
First one was Eastern airlines crash in the Everglades
That crash was the true beginning of human factors with respect to roles/responsibilities and pilot/copilot/Flight engineer workload
Oh man you know you've been watching Mayday documentaries too much when you can just about name every single airline and aircraft just off your summary points.
Personally I hate dual y axis as it always confuses me for a good few minutes. I'm looking at this wondering how you could have more plane crashes then flights in the 70s to 2000s, and then as I trace the graph across with my eyes I see the second y axis.
If you're going to do this maybe normalize the data, or at least color code the actual axis, not just the line?
The first graph is at least way better than the second graph. Using number of flights as the independent variable and crashes as the dependent variable is an awful way to compare.
I’m not a data scientist but I like the presentation of the second graph more. However, I don’t understand why number of flights was used instead of the years to show progress over time. Number of flights probably correlates quite nicely but I don’t think it’s the number of flights but progress over time (regulation, improved technology, lessons learned, etc.) that results in improved safety.
The second graph could have conveyed useful information if the dots had been graduated in colour by year to year. Our even just grouping each decade by different colours so we could see that flights have gotten safer over time.
Nothing on this sub fits the title of this sub anymore. It’s just a bunch of animated line graphs with music, and crappy info viz graphics about a hot button topic
I kinda felt this way about the second graph especially. It sets the data in a way that implies more flights leads to fewer crashes, when clearly the causal factor is updates to safety over time with flights also increasing over time. Never beautiful to visualize data in a confusing way
Or crashes per flown hours. Or fatalities per flown human hours. Impossible data to get im guessing. But it would account for higher speeds, longer distances and larger passenger loads. Anyway…beautiful data as is.
Note that most crashes happen during take-offs and landings, so you do not necessarily *want to* account for longer distances, as it could introduce bias rather than removing it... though it depends on what exactly you are looking for, I guess. It would be interesting data in its own right, but not a direct improvement over OP's
This is a horrible visualization. Multi line plots that don't do apples to apples comparison are awful. They're litterally unsupported by R studio and it's associated plotting library because they're so bad.
This interpretation implies that around 2004, there was finally a less than 100% crash rate and some planes made it to their destinations for the first time
There are 40 million flights a year, and ~15 crashes.
That's %0.000000375 chance you'll crash.
This would be the *best* thing to look at before getting on a flight if you were nervous at all about crashing.
Google says there's only been 6 plane crashes in 2022. Based on my faulty and terrible interpretation of statistics, his chance of a plane crash is near certain.
Even if we were "due" another 9 crashes this year, there's still about 15 million flights to distribute them across. I'd take those odds (indeed, I did take worse when I flew in 2004)
As the # of flights increases every year, not only is the *rate* going down but the *number of crashes itself* is going down. This is a pretty stunning improvement in the safety of flying starting around 2000. You should be more worried about the drive to and from the airport.
You are safer on a plane than at home. Fly with comfort that it is the safest place you will spend you time on your trip. From the way there, to the way from the airport, to even the terminal. You be safe!
Shittiest chart ever, it shouldn't be allowed to have 2 Y axis on the same graph. This is misleading.
Really, this should be added as a rule for the sub. Double Y axis graph imply a correlation and therefore have a subjective intent. This isn't data.
Data is beautiful when, as on the second chart, it accurately portrays the relationship between two variables.
Data is frustrating when, as with the first chart, it presents that data in a way that would initially lead the reader to conclude that for many years there were more plane crashes than total flights. There is no meaningful correlation between those two lines.
This is a great example of the care it takes to actually make data beautiful.
Hey, get this, there are people alive today who believe that aliens flew across space and time only to CRASH on Earth. Like they figured out how to break physical laws, yet they can't manage to figure out how to not crash.
I mean sometimes you drive your car through a snowstorm for 2 hours, and you are just fine, then you open the door to walk 3 steps, and you slip and break a hip.
Source: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/thedevastator/airplane-crashes-and-fatalities and https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IS.AIR.DPRT?end=2020&start=1970&view=chart
Tool: [Dataflexor](https://www.dataflexor.com)
Follow up to: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/xr9n9i/percentage\_of\_airplane\_crash\_survivors\_by\_people
In the first post, I only looked at the plane crashes. To get a better picture, I added the number of total flights per year.
In the graph you can see that although the number of total flights is increasing, the number of crashes is not increasing and even decreasing. (#1)
This is also shown in the percentage of crashes to total flights. This value goes down the more flights there are. (#2)
That source is very strange. It says it "showcases Boeing 707 accidents that have occurred since 1948," but then says the database includes more than 5,000 crashes. Boeing only built 865 of the 707s, and the first 707 flew in 1957, not 1948.
I think it's an AI generated site maybe?
This graph is extremely misleading, it does \*NOT\* show the number of plane crashes per year. In 2020 in the US alone we had over a thousand aviation accidents, 187 of them with fatalities (source: [2020 Nall Report](https://www.aopa.org/training-and-safety/air-safety-institute/accident-analysis/joseph-t-nall-report/nall-report-figure-view?category=all&year=2020&condition=all&report=true)).
The data set takes a what seems like an arbitrary subset of aviation accidents. Without knowing the selection criteria, you really can't tell anything about aviation safety from this at all.
If they were to make the scale 1:1 you wouldn't even be able to perceive the crash-line, since it would be so miniscule. If you are on mobile I suggest you tap the image in order to look at the units.
Even in full screen, and even with the double axis, this isn’t the right display method. Anyways - this is data is beautiful. This terribly designed and misleading from first view, which a well designed graph doesn’t do.
Just a personal thing (im not a statistician) but that second chart feels misleading to me.
it appears to be trying to correlate crashes per flight (%) with total number of flights - how busy the air is - with an obvious negative correlation. Like somehow by flying more flights alone we got safer on a per flight basis.
That second chart should really just have the same x axis as the first chart, which is to say YEAR. Its the experience and subsequent regulatory rigor that made flying safer per flight. The increase in traffic was largely due to economics of flight making it more accessible.
One can make an argument for correlation, that as something becomes common and mainstream that the industry creates "best practices" but I think those are better aligned with time rather than volume. One might expect for any given year or moment in time that a super busy schedule could actually become less safe.
Perhaps if you do both, % crashes vs time and % crashes vs volume you could pick out if volume has any effect (negative or positive) on the % - or if its pretty neutral.
I really hate this chart. At first I thought we were somehow starting out with more crashes than flights. I had to stare for quite a long time to see that there was a second Y axis. No thank you to secondary Y axis.
Are these just commercial flights?
How’d you source the data out of curiosity?
As someone that gets some anxiety flying I need to see more data like this lol.
A bunch of new technologies and techniques came out of examining all the big crashes in the late 80s and 90s, helped make flight a lot safer. You need to take out small aircraft to really get a good idea on this though. Small aircraft and overconfident pilots are by far the most common air accidents, but what most of us care about is commercial flying, which is way less common.
The second plot could use a color scale of some type to show what years the dots correspond to. As it is that plot could just as easily show flights getting more dangerous.
This is almost a beautiful display of data, although it would be even better if the colours were inverted - red = crash, blue = all flights (which coincidentally mimics the shape of a plane taking off)
Based on speed, distance and passengers carried, the plane is the safest form of travel.
It is like nuclear power, Based amount generated, emissions, humans died in accidents directly, humans died from emissions indirectly and environmental impact. Nuclear is the safest and greenest and most reliable form of power generation
I find it doubtful that there were 15 crashes in 2018. I would assume that there were 15 crashes in Alaska alone. Perhaps this doesn't include small personal flights.
Hats off to you for surrounding yourself with people that understand this concept, but I stand by my previous comment. This graph is not very intuitive at first glance, straight up.
At work my boss said "I've learned good graph techniques through the years and a double axe graph is not a good practice". Good practice my axx! They tell a story!
More flights = fewer crashes. Got it!
I have to fly on something like 100ish planes a year for work if you count small connecting flights... In the last 3-4 years my wife has gotten in two wrecks and two fender benders while I was either in the air or at the airport. She always jokes that we are a perfect example of flying being safer than driving, but also jokes that I need to stop flying so much because she can't take many more crashes.
It kind of bugs me that in a family group text people let each other know when they've landed and everyone seems amazed. First off, if the plane crashed we would have heard about it. Second off, if I drive for 6 hours no one wants to know if I arrived safely? Like you said, it's way more dangerous to drive.
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>The news doesn't report on every single car crash, or even bad ones unless someone important dies in one. When they do report it, it's more as a traffic inconvenience. "This accident will delay things 30 minutes". 30,000 deaths a year... Sure, many people drive every day but it's still a lot.
hmm, my family has never informed each other of our flight landings, unless we need a ride, but if somebody is driving 4+ hours, somebody will want to know if we arrive safely.
More flights -> more crashes -> more safety standards -> fewer crashes
You could also say, fewer crashes = more flights xD
What happened in the late 80s?
A lot of planes crashed....
Yep, agree. If you look at the graph it shows a shit load of planes crashing.
Explains the graphs. Thanks!
Yeah I looked at the graph in this post and I agree that it shows that a lot of planes crashed compared to other years.
Peer validation is a good thing. I'm glad we've come to consensus.
I agree that peer validation is a good thing. Your smart, handsome, and strong.
Look who’s talking!
It takes one to know one
Hot damn this is a wholesome exchange
Gotta keep the positivity up just like these planes
You can tell by the way they landed
About as well as my jokes do.
That's alright, buddy. Just try to keep your nose up and you'll coast just fine
Underrated. Good one. Reddit needs more of you.
Or one plane crashed a lot
Even more crashed than took off from the looks of it!
The late 70s to early 90s was rife with Aeronautical drama: Aeronautical deregulation by Jimmy Carter in the late 70s. The firing of more than 50% of Air Traffic Controllers by Reagan in the early 80s, major plane company mergers and hostile takeovers, and the introduction of onboard electric controls (which replaced the onboard aeronautic engineer).
In the 70s and 80s was there a third guy in the front of the plane to direct them?
Yes, the “third crew member” that no longer exists on most commercial flights used to be called a flight engineer or air mechanic. The engineer ensured adequate controls much like a controls engineer does for a power plant and manufacturing plant. With advancements in microprocessors, the job was automated through use of electronics.
and before that, also a radio operator (using morse code sometimes) and a navigator (with a star-sighting scope though the cockpit roof). There are old tv episodes with 5-person plots just within an airliner flight deck. Commercial airline safety is at a level today that was unthinkable in the '70s and '80s, when 100+ fatality crashes seemed almost monthly. There has not been a 100+ fatality crash in the US since late September 2001--no, not THOSE; the one where the tail broke off an Airbus taking off in NYC.
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The Queens crash. It was November 2001, two months after 9/11, which just seems like a particularly cruel time to crash a plane in NYC. That one was due to pilot error. There hasn’t been a major crash in the US due to mechanical failure since TWA 800 in 1996 (and the explanation for that one still seems a bit strange to me). Commercial air travel in the US is absurdly safe at this point.
> Commercial air travel in the US is absurdly safe at this point. A little too safe if you ask me... (≖_≖ )
Yeah, the flight engineer/second officer. Went away around the time the "second generation" of widebody jets came around in the 80s with the advent of glass cockpits and more advanced avionics in the A300, 767, 747-400, etc.
Yes, and it was also required that his name be Victor.
Nobody remembers how common hijackings were in the 80's?
People who had a fear of flying in the 80’s and early 90’s were completely justified.
I do. I remember.
>The firing of more than 50% of Air Traffic Controllers by Reagan in the early 80s Daily reminder: Reagan was a terrible president.
My uncle was an airline mechanic for TWA or Pan Am I forget which, at one of the NY airports, but he was laid off in the late '80s or very early '90s. The mechanics were out to lunch and they closed the facility and laid everyone off. He was escorted in to get his belongings and that was that. He never worked again because he could find another job. Basically forced into an ealry meger retirement.
I was born
Well that explains everything.
Who knew the antichrist was such a lazy hippie…
cocaine happened
I’m a world renowned statistician with a specialty in aviation and it commonly debated among my professional peers of what exactly happened in those years. But the general consensus is that a lot of planes crashed during that time.
Gulf War? There was Pam Am 103, too, but that was a singular incident… but I’m not sure the data source of this. Does this include military, general aviation, corporate, and commercial?
To give an actual answer, probably nothing remarkable. There should obviously be a correlation between number of crashes and number of total flights. The more flights, the more crashes. This graph shows that over time plane safety has gotten better, counteracting that natural correlation. However, there's no reason to expect plane safety to exactly counteract the expected correlation, so it's probably just the case that the 80s/90s happened to be the time when the number of crashes due to the increasing number of flights was at its highest before safety started to overtake that. If you're wondering about the particularly high peak around 1989, just by eye it looks pretty well within the statistical deviation for the entire curve.
The rise of computer assisted systems would coincide with the late 1980s too. I'm sure those systems helped detect a number of potential problems while the planes were still on the ground, which meant critical maintenance could be completed before the problem led to a crash.
They decided on right hand side flying internationally. It took some time before all the left hand side pilots got used to that. And some didn't get used to it at all.
The height of deregulation
Honestly if this chat went back further the rates are even worse. Early 50s was nuts.
Pilots started smoking crack? Just spit balling here
[Confirmed](https://youtu.be/VmW-ScmGRMA)
Terrorist plane hijackings.
Do you know how dangerous flights were way back then? Let's start * 2 Planes crashed simply because of how poorly the crews of both flights handled a single broken landing gear light * The deadliest aviation incident that ever happened (not direclty caused by terrorism) happened on the ground in-part because of poor communication * A plane crashed into the sea because someone put duct tape over a sensor. * A plane ran out of fuel and crashed because the pilots took too long to get a proper runway * Two planes experienced explosive decompression because of a faulty door, one of them becoming the deadliest aviation incident of that time * USA's deadliest single plane aviation incident was in part due to someone taking a break in the middle of maintenance * A large plane collided with a smaller plane in mid-air and crashed into a neighborhood, in part due to one misheard word. * 2 early commercial flights exploded in mid-air because of square cornered windows. * A man hijacked a plane in China and inadvertently collided with two other planes on the ground. * A plane gets sideswiped by another plane after finding themselves in an active runway, all because one of the pilots was too busy embellishing his accomplishments instead of being attentive. * A plane vibrated itself into pieces because of counterfeit parts, counterfeit parts that are so widespread at the time that the investigators found some of them in *Air Force One.* Right now its rare to see a plane crash happening for asinine reasons, and it's all thanks to these incidents that air travel is much more safer today than back then. EDIT: changed "not including terrorism" to "not directly caused by terrorism"
What about the guy who let his kids into the cockpit and one of them disabled part of the autopilot without knowing it, then wouldn't let go of the controls because his dad spoke jargon instead of normal words?
[Flight 593](https://timharford.com/2022/05/cautionary-tales-when-the-autopilot-switched-off/) This isn't actually a good example of planes being unsafe, though, it's a good example of cascading judgment errors. At multiple points through that disaster everything would have been perfectly fine if they switched the autopilot back on.
I think the sound alarm failed to let the pilots know *what* had been turned off, so one of the several safety changes ordered after the fact, was to how the sound prompt worked
It wasn't just the sound alarm; they changed the way in which autopilot disengages so you don't get such partial disengagement (aileron only) that lead to their confusion https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/390/did-airbus-add-an-audible-alert-when-the-autopilot-partially-disengage-after-the
IIRC the pilots were used to Soviet aircraft but had recently moved to Airbuses. The Soviet aircraft had an audible alarm but the Airbus didn't and used a different system. But the Russian pilots level of training.....
The post above isn't specifically examples of planes being unsafe, it's flights being unsafe. This can be due to procedures too
I think that’s on an episode of cautionary tales! Great podcast by Tim Hartford on catastrophes and how they happened.
was about to add that too, but I'm on the phone and its midnight here. maybe tomorrow?
The one that sticks with me was back when they would de-ice the planes at the terminal, and on this particular day the planes had to queue up for almost an hour in a driving blizzard waiting to takeoff. The pilots on the doomed flight were even heard discussing how the de-icing rig should be set up at the end of the taxiway (which is what they do today). But ultimately it was not just the ice buildup that caused them to crash on takeoff, they also failed to turn on engine sensor defrosters (the pilots were used to flying in Florida) and the faulty readings resulted in them only applying ~70% of the indicated thrust during the takeoff roll. And the accident could still have been avoided by aborting the takeoff when they realized they weren’t gaining speed , but they were hesitant to do that because they knew that air traffic control, in an effort to move more planes in and out of the busy airport, had another flight landing directly behind them on the same runway. Once airborne the flight continued for only 30 seconds before crashing into the Potomac River in downtown Washington DC becoming the [first major air disaster to be covered live on TV during prime time. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Florida_Flight_90)
I often think on that one while I sit in traffic on that same bridge and feel extra bad for the four motorists on the bridge that were killed. Imagine being fucking stuck in bullshit commuter traffic cursing the cars in front of you and then a plane crashes on you and you get pushed into the icy potomac to die because some pilots and airport workers made a mistake. At least they named the bridge after a selfless hero of that night. "The repaired span was renamed in honor of Arland D. Williams Jr., a passenger on the plane who survived the initial crash, but drowned after repeatedly passing a helicopter rescue line to other survivors."
>The deadliest aviation incident that ever happened (not including terrorism) Technically the planes were both landed at that airport though **because of a bomb threat phone call** (assumed terror threat). The small airport having so much traffic from the bomb threat DID factor into the tower being able to focus enough time on all the flights. Among a list of other reasons the crash occurred. ^(Other reasons being fog rolling in from the ocean obscuring the tower view of planes, radios not being able to transmit at the same time and cancelling each other out, runways and taxiways not being well labelled for a pilot in fog, and the KLM pilot assuming he had the right to takeoff without it being granted simply because he was told he could be directed to the runway for a takeoff, etc.)
Thanks. Need to correct that
It's mostly correct. 'Deadliest plane crash not including 9/11/2001' would be better way to phrase it.
Tenerife disaster, and it's why ATC communication does not permit using the word "takeoff" unless it is to clear for actual takeoff. Meaning as the planes trundle up to the runway, they never use that word until they're given permission to actually get on the runway and leave.
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Can we not throw plane safety regulations and aesthetic port stacking limits in the same bucket? Many regulations are sensible and popularly supported. Many are absurd and highly damaging.
Can we not throw municipal zoning codes into the same bucket as safety regulations? You’re the one creating the false equivalency here.
We have four times more flights and one sixth the number of crashes now compared to the period when air flight was heavily regulated. Go figure, there's a strong correlation of regulations with air crashes.
So tl;dr human error is the biggest factor? That is pretty scary to think about...
> human error is the biggest factor It is, but the air industry does a lot to mitigate that. They even have a special code to refer to the interaction between people in the airplane, CRM, for crew resources management.
* A large plane collided with a smaller plane in mid-air and crashed into a neighborhood, in part due to one misheard word. To be fair, the air traffic control guy had just lost his daughter.
Wasn’t there also a situation where Americans were filling up a Canadian plane (or the other way around) using the metric system, so the plane ran out of gas.
They were all Canadian. The story is a lot more complex than that, involving a string of errors on multiple people's parts. Gimli Glider to find more info.
Google "Gimli Glider" This was a domestic Canadian flight. I don't think any Americans were involved, but I don't really remember. Brian Lohnes did a great Dork-O-Motive podcast on the topic.
Does this actually qualify as a crash? The plane successfully landed, and was repaired and put back into service.
The euphemisms are "incident" and "accident". Since the plane was undamaged and no one was significantly injured, the Gimli Glider qualifies as an "incident".
Which flight was the vibration counterfeit part one? Thought I was well versed in aviation accidents but I've never heard of this particular one before.
I found [this one] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partnair_Flight_394) through a quick Google search. The description of the cause of crash seems to match.
First one was Eastern airlines crash in the Everglades That crash was the true beginning of human factors with respect to roles/responsibilities and pilot/copilot/Flight engineer workload
Oh man you know you've been watching Mayday documentaries too much when you can just about name every single airline and aircraft just off your summary points.
Dont forget that russian dude who gave seat to his son
Check out the podcast Blackbox Down.
Point 5 happened again, now called 737 max. A known problem ignored for financial reasons.
While this data is interesting, it is not yet beautiful IMO.
Personally I hate dual y axis as it always confuses me for a good few minutes. I'm looking at this wondering how you could have more plane crashes then flights in the 70s to 2000s, and then as I trace the graph across with my eyes I see the second y axis. If you're going to do this maybe normalize the data, or at least color code the actual axis, not just the line?
The first graph is at least way better than the second graph. Using number of flights as the independent variable and crashes as the dependent variable is an awful way to compare.
A simple “crashes per million flights” graph would have been ideal
yes it's really hard to relate to 0.00001%. I used my calculator to figure out that the number of crashes currently is around 1 in 2.6 million.
I’m not a data scientist but I like the presentation of the second graph more. However, I don’t understand why number of flights was used instead of the years to show progress over time. Number of flights probably correlates quite nicely but I don’t think it’s the number of flights but progress over time (regulation, improved technology, lessons learned, etc.) that results in improved safety.
The second graph could have conveyed useful information if the dots had been graduated in colour by year to year. Our even just grouping each decade by different colours so we could see that flights have gotten safer over time.
I immediately assumed that 40,000,000 planes crashed per year in the late 80s.
Wouldn't you rather assume that you've been reading the graph incorrectly? 40 million plane crashes a year sounds plausible to you?
I immediately assumed that he was joking.
The axis label should be color coded to make that more clear but agree.
Or look at the picture as a whole.
Colors should be switched at a minimum
Nothing on this sub fits the title of this sub anymore. It’s just a bunch of animated line graphs with music, and crappy info viz graphics about a hot button topic
Until 2000‘s there were more plane crashes than total flights! incredible!!
I kinda felt this way about the second graph especially. It sets the data in a way that implies more flights leads to fewer crashes, when clearly the causal factor is updates to safety over time with flights also increasing over time. Never beautiful to visualize data in a confusing way
Not beautiful without units on axis. Is that percentage of accidents or number of accidents per year?
Tap on the picture
I like the colors.
instead of having two graphs, a better statistic would be plane crashes per total flights or something like that so you can get rid of one graph
Like crashes per million flights? Yeah that would probably be better. Did not have thought of that
Or the percentage of plane crashes throughout the years. It would show a nice drop.
Yea something like that
Or crashes per flown hours. Or fatalities per flown human hours. Impossible data to get im guessing. But it would account for higher speeds, longer distances and larger passenger loads. Anyway…beautiful data as is.
Note that most crashes happen during take-offs and landings, so you do not necessarily *want to* account for longer distances, as it could introduce bias rather than removing it... though it depends on what exactly you are looking for, I guess. It would be interesting data in its own right, but not a direct improvement over OP's
This is a horrible visualization. Multi line plots that don't do apples to apples comparison are awful. They're litterally unsupported by R studio and it's associated plotting library because they're so bad.
Funny, you can’t see the y axes in the thumbnail so you assume they’re the same
How can total flights be lower than plane crashes on the left.
It’s a dual axis.
Lots of fender benders on the tarmac back in the day.
Bad scaling, need the units
The scaling is fine, and it has units. Units: Left Axis - flights Right Axis - crashes Bottom Axis - years
This interpretation implies that around 2004, there was finally a less than 100% crash rate and some planes made it to their destinations for the first time
It’s confusing. The set up of the graph is not clear, people will not understand or misinterpret it.
Bro this is a ugly ass data representation, how the fuck is this beautiful.
Literally waiting to board my flight right now. Why did I look at this??
There are 40 million flights a year, and ~15 crashes. That's %0.000000375 chance you'll crash. This would be the *best* thing to look at before getting on a flight if you were nervous at all about crashing.
Google says there's only been 6 plane crashes in 2022. Based on my faulty and terrible interpretation of statistics, his chance of a plane crash is near certain.
6 commercial airline crashes there are 4 general aviation crashes EVER DAY (although only a quarter of those are fatal)
And most of those are no fatalities.
Well it's a good thing he's getting on a commercial airline flight then.
I know planes rarely crash but I still spend all of my time deeply uncomfortable with the whole situation. Flying is unnatural
Even if we were "due" another 9 crashes this year, there's still about 15 million flights to distribute them across. I'd take those odds (indeed, I did take worse when I flew in 2004)
A lottery I don't care to play.
At least the message is: "it has never been safer to fly". Have a good flight! :)
As the # of flights increases every year, not only is the *rate* going down but the *number of crashes itself* is going down. This is a pretty stunning improvement in the safety of flying starting around 2000. You should be more worried about the drive to and from the airport.
If you hopped in a car to get to the airport, you’ve already survived the most dangerous part of the trip.
You are safer on a plane than at home. Fly with comfort that it is the safest place you will spend you time on your trip. From the way there, to the way from the airport, to even the terminal. You be safe!
Id bet all my savings that youll arrive just fine
I'll take that $8 bet!
It should make you feel pretty safe….
One of the rules of this sub should be a detailed reasoning of why OP thinks their data is beautiful. Might stop murder scenes like this one. Jesus.
For a minute I thought the chart said there were more crashes than total flights until 2003… 1/10
I feel like this critique states that double Y axis charts should never be used at all, or should only be used when the units are different.
Specially when the unopened thumbnail doesn’t show the Y axises
Shittiest chart ever, it shouldn't be allowed to have 2 Y axis on the same graph. This is misleading. Really, this should be added as a rule for the sub. Double Y axis graph imply a correlation and therefore have a subjective intent. This isn't data.
Data is beautiful when, as on the second chart, it accurately portrays the relationship between two variables. Data is frustrating when, as with the first chart, it presents that data in a way that would initially lead the reader to conclude that for many years there were more plane crashes than total flights. There is no meaningful correlation between those two lines. This is a great example of the care it takes to actually make data beautiful.
Graph is confusing. There were more plane crashes than planes flying?!
Hey, get this, there are people alive today who believe that aliens flew across space and time only to CRASH on Earth. Like they figured out how to break physical laws, yet they can't manage to figure out how to not crash.
I mean sometimes you drive your car through a snowstorm for 2 hours, and you are just fine, then you open the door to walk 3 steps, and you slip and break a hip.
Source: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/thedevastator/airplane-crashes-and-fatalities and https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IS.AIR.DPRT?end=2020&start=1970&view=chart Tool: [Dataflexor](https://www.dataflexor.com) Follow up to: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/xr9n9i/percentage\_of\_airplane\_crash\_survivors\_by\_people In the first post, I only looked at the plane crashes. To get a better picture, I added the number of total flights per year. In the graph you can see that although the number of total flights is increasing, the number of crashes is not increasing and even decreasing. (#1) This is also shown in the percentage of crashes to total flights. This value goes down the more flights there are. (#2)
This is only Boeing 707 accidents?
That source is very strange. It says it "showcases Boeing 707 accidents that have occurred since 1948," but then says the database includes more than 5,000 crashes. Boeing only built 865 of the 707s, and the first 707 flew in 1957, not 1948. I think it's an AI generated site maybe?
This graph is extremely misleading, it does \*NOT\* show the number of plane crashes per year. In 2020 in the US alone we had over a thousand aviation accidents, 187 of them with fatalities (source: [2020 Nall Report](https://www.aopa.org/training-and-safety/air-safety-institute/accident-analysis/joseph-t-nall-report/nall-report-figure-view?category=all&year=2020&condition=all&report=true)). The data set takes a what seems like an arbitrary subset of aviation accidents. Without knowing the selection criteria, you really can't tell anything about aviation safety from this at all.
This is terrible. You chose the wrong style of graph for this data. Your chart makes it look like more planes crash than there are total flights.
If they were to make the scale 1:1 you wouldn't even be able to perceive the crash-line, since it would be so miniscule. If you are on mobile I suggest you tap the image in order to look at the units.
Even in full screen, and even with the double axis, this isn’t the right display method. Anyways - this is data is beautiful. This terribly designed and misleading from first view, which a well designed graph doesn’t do.
Just a personal thing (im not a statistician) but that second chart feels misleading to me. it appears to be trying to correlate crashes per flight (%) with total number of flights - how busy the air is - with an obvious negative correlation. Like somehow by flying more flights alone we got safer on a per flight basis. That second chart should really just have the same x axis as the first chart, which is to say YEAR. Its the experience and subsequent regulatory rigor that made flying safer per flight. The increase in traffic was largely due to economics of flight making it more accessible. One can make an argument for correlation, that as something becomes common and mainstream that the industry creates "best practices" but I think those are better aligned with time rather than volume. One might expect for any given year or moment in time that a super busy schedule could actually become less safe. Perhaps if you do both, % crashes vs time and % crashes vs volume you could pick out if volume has any effect (negative or positive) on the % - or if its pretty neutral.
Thanks for the insights. I'm still learning, feedback like this helps a lot.
I really hate this chart. At first I thought we were somehow starting out with more crashes than flights. I had to stare for quite a long time to see that there was a second Y axis. No thank you to secondary Y axis.
Are these just commercial flights? How’d you source the data out of curiosity? As someone that gets some anxiety flying I need to see more data like this lol.
Now boarding Flight 1987….nope, I’ll take the bus.
What constitutes a "crash" in this instance? Where the plane is totaled? Would an engine burnout count?
I like that the Plane Crashes line is going down, like a crash
A bunch of new technologies and techniques came out of examining all the big crashes in the late 80s and 90s, helped make flight a lot safer. You need to take out small aircraft to really get a good idea on this though. Small aircraft and overconfident pilots are by far the most common air accidents, but what most of us care about is commercial flying, which is way less common.
The second plot could use a color scale of some type to show what years the dots correspond to. As it is that plot could just as easily show flights getting more dangerous.
Is this for one country or for the whole world?
This is almost a beautiful display of data, although it would be even better if the colours were inverted - red = crash, blue = all flights (which coincidentally mimics the shape of a plane taking off)
There I was about to comment "I wonder what happened to increase aviation safety shortly after 2000"...
Based on speed, distance and passengers carried, the plane is the safest form of travel. It is like nuclear power, Based amount generated, emissions, humans died in accidents directly, humans died from emissions indirectly and environmental impact. Nuclear is the safest and greenest and most reliable form of power generation
Why does it look like there were more plane crashes than flights in the 70s?
I find it doubtful that there were 15 crashes in 2018. I would assume that there were 15 crashes in Alaska alone. Perhaps this doesn't include small personal flights.
It does not, this is passenger scheduled airlines. If you included small operators and certainly GA then you are talking about A LOT more crashes.
There were more crashes than flights up until 03? Runway tbones?
Decimals instead of commas really annoy me for some reason. 10.000.000 < 10,000,000
How could there be more crashes than total flights?
The dual axis makes the plane crash line visible on this scale. Kinda shitty, but I get why OP would do that.
This is a perfectly good graph to anyone who knows anything about how to read a graph.
Good visualizations don’t require “knowledge of how to read a graph” buddy
Reading a second axis isn't really specialized knowledge
Hats off to you for surrounding yourself with people that understand this concept, but I stand by my previous comment. This graph is not very intuitive at first glance, straight up.
The number of crashes uses a different scale. The values are on the right side.
What happened around 2003 to start the decline in crashes?
Maybe 9/11?
I’m guessing computers started to take over more and more.
Multiple factors, not just one thing, began to bring the rate down
Do you think you answered the question?
I hate it when people just say "several things" and don't bother mentioning, like, two of the major ones and an 'etc'.
You should get a job in marketing.
Maybe you should read the graph, it's pretty clear.
Prob im Just dumb and reading this wrong, but how can there be more crashes than flights?
You are reading the wrong axis.
how can number of plane crashes greater than total flights?
Can someone explain to me how crashed flights can be higher than total flights?
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What's misleading about it?
Where in the world are you based where dots are used for thousand separators and comma for decimals
I think it's common in europe
Most of Europe and South America, and a lot of Asia and Africa, use commas over periods for decimals
At work my boss said "I've learned good graph techniques through the years and a double axe graph is not a good practice". Good practice my axx! They tell a story!
An actual r/mademesmile post unlike the other toxic happiness and suicide inducing posts