US airlines transported passengers over two light-years since the last crash

US Airline Safety Record & Boeing-Related Concerns

• Many are surprised there have been no fatal US passenger airline crashes since 2009, calling it an extraordinary safety achievement.
• Others argue this record involved substantial luck, citing the 737 MAX crashes abroad and the Alaska door-plug blowout as near‑misses that could have involved US airlines or caused mass casualties.
• Some criticize Boeing’s legal treatment (deferred prosecution, relatively small fines) and regulatory exemptions from safety rules “written in blood.”

Pilot Training, Procedures, and MCAS

• Debate over how much the MAX crashes were about design vs pilot training.
• One side: properly trained 737 pilots should have executed the “runaway stabilizer trim” memory checklist and saved the aircraft.
• Counterpoint: pilots were not told about MCAS, it barely appeared in manuals, and many crews globally had weaker training and less manual‑flying experience than typical US crews.

How to Measure Travel Risk

• Long, detailed argument about the “right” denominator:
  • Per mile / per passenger‑mile: strongly favors aviation; often used to compare to cars.
  • Per trip: highlights that planes undertake far fewer, much longer trips; some say this aligns better with “will I survive this trip?”
  • Per hour: others prefer this as closest to “life spent in risky activity.”
• Several note that risks aren’t linear in distance: takeoff/landing phases for planes and short urban trips for cars are disproportionately dangerous.
• Consensus: no single metric is perfect; context (purpose of trip, available alternatives) matters.

Aggregated Statistics and “Passenger‑Miles”

• Some dislike huge aggregate numbers (light‑years flown) as rhetorically flashy but conceptually thin.
• Others say aggregation is precisely what reveals how safe aviation is.
• One critique: using passenger‑miles vs aircraft accidents understates risk per person, since each crash kills many passengers at once.

Comparisons to Other Systems (Cars, Trains, Nuclear)

• Repeated contrast: road deaths massively outweigh aviation deaths; driving remains far more dangerous overall.
• Trains may be even safer than planes per trip in some data.
• Nuclear power is cited as an industry with even stricter safety expectations, at the cost of huge expense and political constraints.

Cargo Flights, Near Misses, and Swiss‑Cheese Safety

• Thread notes cargo crashes (e.g., Atlas Air 2019) aren’t counted in the article’s framing, and cargo/feeder operations appear riskier than mainline passenger airlines.
• Multiple comments emphasize frequent near‑misses and incident chains, especially in less regulated environments; disasters occur when multiple layers fail.
• The “Swiss cheese model” is invoked to explain how stacked, redundant defenses make airline travel extremely safe compared to cars.

Units, Light‑Years, and Human Travel

• Some object to mixing units and prefer strict SI; others defend light‑years as intuitive for huge distances and appropriate for an astronomical analogy.
• A side discussion estimates how many “light‑years” humans have walked collectively, mostly to show scale and put the airline figure in perspective.