this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
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Having the public lose trust in the safety of flying is absolutely not something you want to happen. This could have devastating effects and I think enough is enough and the government needs to step in and take over running the airlines. It's too important to leave gold hoarding dragons in charge of it.
Boeing is the only company actually trying to reach their net zero target. Once no Boeing plane are flying anymore that's it, no more CO2 emissions
Silver lining: less flights booked means less emissions for the environment.
Iirc the increase in people driving instead of flying due to 911, lead to more accidents and deaths. :(
But more deaths leads to fewer emissions! A bright side!
Well, it doesn't really contribute to less people that much considering the global birth rate, and also it removes a usable car from service that will at this moment be replaced using materials and processes that are likely not too great and probably loaded with an interface that sucks worse ass and breaks more often. Tricky all around.
That's not great... I can only hope more people opt for trains instead this time.
If we had high speed rail, I’d absolutely love to take a train to just go places, but cross country trains in the US take absolutely forever. If you aren’t in a hurry, sure, great option, cheap, but doesn’t really work well for vacations or emergencies or whatever when you have very limited time.
For example, Chicago to Seattle takes 46 hours by train but 30 hours by car. Even with stops for food, gas, and bathroom, even staying somewhere for the night, you aren’t adding 16 hours on.
https://www.amtrak.com/empire-builder-train
We really need to invest more in high speed rail.. like everywhere here. Until then, unfortunately, I doubt people will shift that way overall.
Idk.... That might even out. During a 30 hr drive, I'd probably add on at least 8-9 hours for every 8-9 driven, because that's as long as I can stand to drive at a stretch without needing to find a hotel to stop for the night. Driving for that long is goddamned miserable, and at least in a train you can book an overnight car to sleep in so that even when you sleep travel keeps happening.
Idk, maybe I'm totally off base and this is totally personal preference, but if I'm already driving that far, I'd rather just take the train to not have to worry about driving myself.
Also driving for extended periods of time really fucks with your perception of speed and your reaction time.
Personally I also hate driving, so I’m sort of with you on that (tho for me, unless it was a trip where stops are the point, I couldn’t see adding almost an entire day to a trip that’s barely over a day to begin with, but I also wouldn’t be doing that sort of trip solo, and driver swapping helps a ton), but I find people have 2 modes typically and neither one of them does all that well with the current rail infrastructure.
First mode is “get there as fast as we can so we can enjoy the accommodations/ locations we are traveling for”, which most people fly for, but many will drive for if they need to move a lot of people or equipment. You can do that on a train, assuming one stops anywhere near where you intend to go, but when you have multiple people to switch off driving and don’t stop, that extra time matters.
The other mode is the “journey is the destination” with frequent stops to get out of the car and do stuff… but then we typically just call those road trips. I’ve done several of those where most of the trip is traveling between stops. Trains don’t do well for that currently since they have so few stops and run so infrequently, so the journey isn’t particularly exciting. Busses are better for this sort of travel, with the present infrastructure, but not a very comfortable trip. Busses would also very likely take about the same time as a train, since they make a lot of extended stops.
Very few people seem to fall into the grey area between these two things, where they both don’t care to stop anywhere, and don’t care how fast they get there. And I think this is largely because most people don’t have time for leisurely travel. Most people get extended-weekend trips and maybe one week-long vacation a year, so 4 days round trip of just traveling but not being able to stop anywhere would ruin most plans for people, unless they just want to ride the train.
But if we invested in high-speed rail, you could both get there faster than driving -and- have a better experience than driving, which would get many people to switch right quick. It shouldn’t have to be a “pick one or the other” situation, when literally the only barrier is infrastructure spending which would be great for the economy, and it would be better for literally everyone to have it. Amtrak is a private entity, technically, but the US government is the majority shareholder, the board of directors is appointed mostly by the president of the US, they get a lot of funding from state and fed government, and thus govt has considerable power to make that happen.
It just really sucks that the only significant passenger rail options we have now are designed to be slow scenic trips, a gimmick where the whole point of them is the leisurely trip. They aren’t really meant for actual commute use, and that’s just super short-sighted and wasteful. And I think until they get faster, with more routes and stops along the routes, we aren’t going to see people adopting them in the numbers we need them to.
Gah! I wish so desperately that wasn't the case, but I can't dispute that. It really does feel like without investment in our rail network, there's no good way of long distance travel, so it's currently just a shit sandwich all around.
I think the problem is that this will likely lead to more driving instead of flying.
As someone who lives on an island, lol. But still a good point assuming a North American car centric viewpoint. I’ll be resorting to wind power, jetski, breath stroke, or airbus. Perhaps other options including rail ( yes we have it on Islands too ) may look competitive again.
They don’t have boats on your island? Sounds like a lack of conviction to me.
Kidding, of course.
Maybe even a return to train travel.
I hope that prompts more funding into Amtrak if people do opt for that!
One can seriously hope, and moreover hope that the trains are electrified. We seem to be pathologically afraid of re-electrifying rail in the US.
That’s not a silver lining at all. Jets are actually very fuel efficient compared to driving when they’re full of passengers.
One less plane in the air could potentially mean 300+ more cars on the road. Not a great outcome.
Gold lining: Never go home for Holidays
Platinum Lining: Work from Home is even more commonplace, and no more random flights to the office, or on-site.
Having the public lose trust in the safety of flying is something I absolutely want to happen. This will have devastating effects on carbon emissions, and push more people (and governments) towards trains.
Devastating is a bit of an exaggeration with it being responsible for a whooping 3% (at most) of emissions and arguably helping raise the albedo a bit with their contrails.
So it would help a bit, it wouldn't be a game changer though (except if you live near an airport, sound is another pollution that's often ignored).
I would rather we start using blimos what can we do towards that
What is that like really fancy long blimps
y...yeah. That wasn't a typo at all it's a revolutionary idea.
We can even have a nazi punching lounge like in indiana jones
But without planes and their deadly propellers, where will we push Nazis?
I mean, I don’t think that’s the way to go about it. Trains don’t take me to my family across the planet in 11 hours. I’d prefer to feel secure when flying there.
Airbus will still be (mostly) safe. And I'm more concerned with the number of flights - particularly short flights that can be substituted by trains - than with flying per se. For long-distance travel, we don't have a comparable alternative (yet).
Why promote flying? Why not invest heavily in really fast ground transportation? Let's build a bullet train between major hubs so people have a choice. If there's a serious competitor to flying, Boeing will have to improve or they'll lose a ton of business.
If the government takes over airlines or airplane manufacturing, we'll just end up with lots of cronyism.
I say start with LA to SF and LA to LV. The current infra there sucks, and there's a lot of worthwhile stops along the way. Then perhaps upgrade NYC to DC and related lines. It'll be incredibly expensive to roll out, but should be very cheap to run and maintain.
Yeah, here we go. Trains are so much more pleasant. If they weren't 10 times as slow I would never fly.
We have the tech for high speed rail, we just refused to build it because of lobbying (bribery), regulatory capture, and forced dependence on cars and planes.
To me at least the speed isn’t a problem. I’d much rather take a 2 day Amtrak (in sleeper) than an 8 hour plane.
The problem is the pricing, and also how much it fluctuates due to the extremely low capacity (one train a day…)
You gonna build a bullet train across the ocean?
No, planes are good for that. But there's a ton of domestic travel that could easily be replaced with a decent rail network.
Yes, it's always going to be unfeasible to cross the Atlantic or Pacific by train.
But the vast, vast majority of air journeys taken every day aren't trans-oceanic ones. Most journeys are between destinations within the Americas or within Eurasia and Africa. There are an awful lot of journeys by plane that could be moved to trains if the infrastructure was right.
Ekranoplan when?
Ekranobahn.
The government has already stepped in several times. If you’re in the mood to get mad, read up on the results of these interventions. Basically, Boeing was almost forced to deal with actual oversight, but was able to convince the government at the last minute that they could handle the oversight themselves internally (thanks to the wonderful process of lobbying of course)
The above comment means to nationalize the industry I think. That's what it sounds like to me, and I agree it'd be a good step. In addition to safety, it'd stop them from their bullshit price gouging.
It's not about trust in flying it's about trust in Boeing. Slight difference.
so, it's about trust in half of flying
Boeing was being brash until they got caught with their pants down.
You know for sure that shit happens at other manufacturers but they kept it low, and they probably are tightening their QA to not fall to scrutiny.
I hope that this will trigger heavy scrutiny from the different bodies across the world to make sure that this shit doesn't happen anymore, but that hope is naive.
That seems to be a rather unfair assertion to make. Boeing seems to be unique amongst the big airlines in having these problems; and they're relatively new problems for them too, in the grand scheme of things.
I've never once heard of systemic issues of this sort at Airbus, and it seems lazy to do a "they're all the same!" when this really does seem to be a Boeing problem first and foremost.
This happens every time a company focus shifts from building a good product to appeasing the shareholder gods. Capitalism kills.
Boeing isn't an airline...
The government already heavily subsidizes the "struggling" industry (that somehow still makes outrageous profits). The government really should exercise more control over the industry, given that they (we) pay a very high annual price for it to exist.
They used to... one of carters biggest blunders.
Come on, it only effects like 1/4 of the economy.