Originally Posted by
Frank_B
Just a thought about the media:
I work in aviation. More specifically, I fix airplanes for a living. Usually, when a plane crashes (or goes missing) the media goes absolutely nuts interviewing “aviation experts” for details on what might have gone wrong. Moreover, they usually interview pilots and never engineers or mechanics. I have no beef with pilots, but generally speaking, they have very little knowledge of the mechanics of how the thing operates. This is especially true on large airplanes. They don’t have to, for the same reason you don’t have to know how your car operates to drive it. Asking a pilot about a mechanical problem on the airplane, though, is like asking a random driver on the road, why the car crashed in the ditch had a missing wheel. Some might be able to point to telltale signs of misuse or abuse, poor mechanical operability, etc... Most wouldn’t know.
I can say this with certainty: The amount of misinformation, incorrect or incomplete information, and downright stupid and non-relevant questions that come out of reporters’ mouths in those situations is abysmal. It’s actually somewhat of a joke in the industry as to how bad it is.
The MH370 disappearance was probably the worst. I cannot even begin to explain in laymen’s terms how awful that coverage was. Yet, the gasping fear generated by the media coverage is, in part, what propagates the industry to be a bureaucrats wet dream and an industry’s worst nightmare.
We are effectively doing as a country what the government did to Boeing after two crashes that, while preventable, were also heavily influenced by failures of specific airlines to adequately train their pilots. We quarantined the airplanes for upwards of a year (they still are quarantined) and keep finding petty reasons why they are unsafe. All because a few “aviation experts” made it sound like they were going to start falling from the sky.
There were design flaws, yes. Fairly dumb ones. It was a bad situation, but didn’t warrant the outrageous actions that were taken. Just remember that when the news is interviewing a doctor, an epidemiologist, or some other “expert,” that they rarely are experts and, if aviation is a guide, you’re getting info at the first grade level - not the PhD level.