To be fair, the bits falling off the 777 engines are NOT Boeing parts, the one that used to catch fire has been fixed (new battery technology and the heat of lithium fires make for explosive interactions!) and the new one with origami landing gear isn’t actually flying anywhere...yet!
Planes are, and have always been, engineering miracles. Getting 1,000,000 pounds of metal and Jet A into the stratosphere with an almost perfect safety record is amazing. Plus, the fact that you can then put 600,000 pounds of it gently back down to earth at 180 miles per hour...and then do it all again in a few hours without skipping a beat...is an absolute fucking miracle!
Throw in the fact that the whole machine is literally built to spend the vast majority of its working life on the edge of space, where the temperature is less -60C, there is only enough air for a few seconds of useful consciousness and the outside air pressure is less than 1/3 of that needed to live on the ground and one quickly realized that flying has been made so safe that we take the hazardous environment in which it operates an afterthought!
Engine failure and a bit of a fire?
No problem!
Rapid depressurization?
Put the mask on and descend, piece of piss, and a good story to tell the reporters who want to buy your cellphone footage of the masks dangling and people praying!
Fire IN the aircraft? OK, NOW you’ve woken me up and I’ve sucked my big comfy seat cushion half way up my arse!!! 8^O
The rest is drilled into us like driving a semi to a long distance lorry driver!
Boeing literally made aviation so safe that ANYTHING that happens today is a front page, above the fold, lead the TV news, story. That’s fine with me! I like those odds...even if the planes are now largely being built in a non-union plant in South Carolina, where “technicians” are rapidly outpacing the “engineers” that used to be far more prevalent on the factory floor, and aluminum riveters are being replaced by robots and carbon fiber autoclaves!
