Boeing is already a public/private enterprise. The down years in commercial aircraft are propped up by US Gov defence orders, lots of primary research is funded by the US taxpayer, the US Gov works very hard to help Boeing sell airplanes, and there’s heaps of tax breaks available at the State level.
Many of the trade offs that Boeing has made - outsourcing, devaluing internal expertise, focusing on shareholder returns over risky long-term bets, and aggressively fighting unions - mirror US culture more generally. There’s little evidence that nationalising Boeing would change this - as an example related to this news story, the DoD is outsourcing more and more of its training and aggressor flying to private corporations.
It is worth pointing out that many of the points about Boeing being a public/private enterprise also apply to Airbus.
I don’t want to argue that the keyboards and mice are perfect, but we have two magic keyboards, two mice, and one gen1 trackpad that have all been extremely reliable. All are +/- 10 years old.
Well, one mouse and one trackpad didn’t survive a recent toddler/tile floor situation. But that’s not Apple’s fault ;)
It’s not “for the sake of a wink and a nod” or “dogwhistling.” The ACLU is actively campaigning against the way the US Government and ICE in particular treats immigrants and people around the borders.
Have a look at the ACLU website... their position is quite clear.
BACS is generally cheaper at volume. In addition, BACS Bureau allows a payroll company to transfer money directly from your employer's account to yours without the money ever reaching their account.
All fixable, but payroll companies are generally chosen on price, not innovation.
The auction cleared at £45/MWh (1). This means that the bids referenced in the Bloomberg story have succeeded. Bloomberg have significantly updated their story to reflect the results.
In today’s good news story, we can change “may” to “will” in the headline to match the updated story :)
Hard to say definitively - double malfunctions are relatively rare, so the sample size isn’t enormous.
More time can increase the likelihood that you can get some piece of parachute fabric above your head. And if you can do that, the odds go way up. There’s a saying I was taught on the first jump: “keep fighting until your goggles fill with blood.”
But if you cannot get a parachute out for some reason, a longer freefall will only give you more time to contemplate your fate.
> after some inflection point, does your likelihood of survival actually increase with altitude?
For humans, no. After ~10sec you’re falling at terminal velocity, which is generally 2-300km/h, and your odds of survival are extraordinarily close to zero.
This lady had a double malfunction, where there were issues with both main and reserve parachutes, but per a police report (1), she was descending at 60km/h, so she must have had at least some parachute material out and slowing her fall.
She’s very lucky, despite what’s likely to be a shitty next couple of years of rehab, but this isn’t a “fell from an airplane without a parachute and survived” miracle.
The primary things that's changed has been the availability of small powerful gas-turbine engines. That's what's made the folks you've mentioned, plus the Jetman project, possible.
To the best of my knowledge, this class of engines were originally developed for model aircraft.
> Do the regulators take into account whether the firm is actually at fault?
To echo others: yes, a lot. To quote the Information Commissioner:
> "I have no intention of changing the ICO’s proportionate and pragmatic approach after 25 May [the GDPR intro date] ... Hefty fines will be reserved for those organisations that persistently, deliberately or negligently flout the law."
£183m is about 10% of the profit BA made in FY 2018 before exceptional items:
> Despite these challenges, our revenues have held up, increasing 5.7 per cent versus last year. ... we achieved an operating profit of £1,952 million before exceptional items and a return on invested capital (RoIC) of 17.3 per cent
That analogy doesn’t hold up. All Airbus and most Boeing aircraft have systems to push the nose down in event of a stall.
The problem here is: in the transition from the -NG to the -MAX, Boeing added this protection and didn’t tell anyone.
Imagine someone added Adaptive Cruise Control to your existing car without telling you - the first time the car braked on its own, you’d freak out. The car is suddenly behaving in a way it should be able to.
If you know the system exists, you can recognise what’s happening and deal with it. If you don’t know it exists, the behaviour is going to be absolutely baffling, and no in-flight diagnostic procedure has a step for “did the manufacturer add an important safety device and not tell me?”
Likewise - in the decade I was active in the sport of skydiving, I heard plenty of stories around using the sport to help with stress, depression, and other issues back in the “real world”.
Never heard of a tandem jumper saying that, but then, how big is my sample size?
Many of the trade offs that Boeing has made - outsourcing, devaluing internal expertise, focusing on shareholder returns over risky long-term bets, and aggressively fighting unions - mirror US culture more generally. There’s little evidence that nationalising Boeing would change this - as an example related to this news story, the DoD is outsourcing more and more of its training and aggressor flying to private corporations.
It is worth pointing out that many of the points about Boeing being a public/private enterprise also apply to Airbus.