
In 2015, Allegiant Air jets made unexpected landings at least 77 times - martin_
http://www.tampabay.com/projects/2016/investigations/allegiant-air/mechanical-breakdowns/
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peterwwillis
Here's why this article is not FUD.

First of all, everything with mechanical parts needs regular maintenance, and
almost always will reach a point where it should be replaced. If you aren't
maintaining it, you are opening yourself up to unnecessary risk.

Second, these are maintenance-related issues which are required by law and are
not being followed up on, so they're not following the law, even if the FAA
claims they're hunky dory. They're clearly not.

Third, when a vehicle like a car has a maintenance or human operator error, a
small handful of people's lives at risk. With planes, it's a couple hundred
people's lives, and you can't just pull off to the shoulder of the highway to
change a flat. Not to mention the things you may hit when you "unexpectedly
forceably land".

Planes are designed to withstand multiple serious malfunctions, because there
is no alternative: you're 30 thousand fucking feet in the air going 500 miles
per hour. So just because there are major failures that have _not yet killed
anyone_ is not because there is no problem: it's because planes were designed
to be bomb-proof and they are barely holding on to their shakey safety record.

Airline safety is incredibly important because even a single safety issue can
cause a large impact in the public's perception of the industry's safety,
which affects how many tickets are sold. So from a selfish perspective, you
want them to be safe so your ticket price doesn't go up.

Finally, there's the whole point of the article: THE AIRLINE IS TWO TO FOUR
TIMES LESS SAFE THAN ALL THE OTHERS, WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY DOING?!

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bpodgursky
Is that a lot? Nobody has actually died. Nobody has crashed.

US airlines are incredibly safe as a form of transit. An airline flying older
planes will have more issues.

Someone will always have the most issues. I think it's cheap journalism to
call them out without an actual compelling reason to think lives are at risk.

~~~
mjevans
The thing most major disasters involving human built things have in common is
that it is often a series of failures. An 'alignment of the planets' where
everything happens to fall in to place and that string of 1-s comes up on the
cosmic die to let you die.

What this article is covering is how much closer, by a wide margin,
Allegiant's running to that result than other airlines in the US.

~~~
gameshot911
The 'alignment of the planets' is known in certain industries as the Swiss
cheese model[1].

[1][https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Swiss_cheese_model](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Swiss_cheese_model)

~~~
sqeaky
That is an interesting way to describe "defense in depth" to non-technical
people that ought to be easy to understand. Thank you.

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Derbasti
The article makes it sound like their planes are failing all the time, while
the statistics say that Allegiant has 12 failures per 10000 flights. That sure
is more than any other American airline, but it is not nearly as alarming as
this article is describing it.

Add to that that there was not a single fatality, and you can safely conclude
that this article is alarmist FUD, nothing more.

~~~
tomohawk
The airline industry functions as a whole. One bad actor can seriously hurt
the whole industry. With such a poor safety record (2 - 3 times worse than any
of the others), they are not credible. There is a danger that if this is not
taken care of, others may follow suit and this will become the new normal.

It is very strange that the FAA is so serious about on time statistics and
enabling comparisons between airlines on that basis, but not on this basis.

~~~
kapnobatairza
If we are looking at the airline industry as a whole, wouldn't the worst
offender always be a certain number of standard deviations from the norm? I
don't think we can make a judgment unless we can see a graph that represents
failures per 10000 flights amongst the industry as a whole, and see if
Allegiant falls within the bell curve that produces.

~~~
tomohawk
I don't think so. It's a dynamic system, not a static one. If one actor gets
away with it and is more successful, then others will follow. The regulator's
responsibility is to minimize safety critical differences between the carriers
by getting the worst performers to improve or leave the market.

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makomk
If you think about it, there's a really good reason why you might not want to
punish airlines for making emergency landings.

~~~
throwanem
Not one by one, no. But if your airline makes emergency landings at more than
twice the rate anyone else does, it's hard to complain when someone asks
questions about that.

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lucaspiller
> But industry observers say there’s a reason most air travel is so expensive.
> It’s difficult both to offer great deals and spend the money needed for a
> reliable fleet.

In Europe it seems to work ok for low-cost airlines. Compared to state-
airlines the aircraft are newer and cleaner, and they aren't know for
reliability issues. As a customer that suggests they are better maintained -
and nobody is going to prop them up if something goes wrong, so they have more
incentive to do so.

~~~
alexseman
You can check here how they manage to do that
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=069y1MpOkQY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=069y1MpOkQY)

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codeonfire
It says they fly the MD-80, also known as the mechanical disaster.

This is off topic, but A fascinating thing about these planes is the control
surfaces are aero powered through tab surfaces. They hang and move freely when
the plane is stopped and only become controllable after the plane starts
rolling down the runway.

~~~
throwanem
I've looked at several sources now, and still haven't got a clear mental
picture of exactly how that works. I suppose it must, since the aircraft don't
usually fall out of the sky, but it's hard to see a reason why such complexity
would be necessary.

~~~
votingprawn
Tabs are a way to reduce the amount of stick force (i.e. force applied by the
pilot) required to deflect a control surface in a mechanically linked system.
In most modern aircraft hydraulic or electric systems fill the same purpose

To give a simplified explanation, a small tab located at the trailing edge of
the surface is deflected by the control linkage. The deflection of the tab
generates an aerodynamic force which then creates a moment around the control
surface hinge, moving the entire surface.

So if you deflect the tab upwards, that air flow over the tab generates a
downwards force that acts to move the control surface down.

~~~
scrumper
And another layer of simplification: the pilot controls small control tabs
which fly the main control surface into the position the pilot wants it to be
in, which then moves the wing.

Usually the connection between pilot intent and wing movement is:

Pilot moves the stick->Aileron moves, changing lift on the wing->wing moves

In the MD-80:

Pilot moves the stick->Tab moves, changing lift on the aileron->aileron moves,
changing lift on the wing->wing moves

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mcphage
This is probably the worst thing to read the day after buying plane tickets
for my family to fly Allegiant Air down to... Tampa.

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chrisbolt
Allegiant.

~~~
iamdave
Thank you for this. I went and read the article anyway, but this title is
absolute garbage.

~~~
lucb1e
I didn't make anything of it but after reading your comment I'm guessing
Allegiant is an airline with frequent trouble? Because the word doesn't mean
anything by itself in this context that I can see.

~~~
lucb1e
4 downvotes, so apparently it means something to everyone but me.

