For context, the 737 NG is previous iteration of the 737 (before the MAX) and among the most popular aircraft ever built, with over 7000 in service. Grounding this would absolutely cripple the airline industry.
However, the NG also has an excellent safety record, and 35000 cycles is equivalent to 5 flights (takeoff & landing) every day for 10 years. So while this may lead to extra checks on older aircraft, it's highly unlikely to cause a MAX-style global grounding.
The part was found damaged at 35,000 cycles. That means it took less than or equal to 35,000 cycles. It's not clear whether it cracked earlier, how many such failures would be needed to down the plane, etc.
The article indicated the crack was found not during a regular inspection, but during modifications: "Boeing notified the agency of the matter after it discovered the cracks while conducting modifications on a heavily used aircraft."
And they only found the cracks in other aircraft after specifically looking for it after they noticed the crack in the first aircraft, so it doesn't sound like something checked as part of routine maintenance.
I don’t know for these. C-checks for 737NG are performed every 730 days and include corrosion/wear checks for the most stressed parts, but not all parts (which are checked at D checks): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_maintenance_checks
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, but shifting the goalposts from airframe incidents to ordinance safety really doesn't suit this discussion.
The B-52 is an interesting case of a set of exceptionally long-service individual airframes, with current planned utilisation of aircraft built in the 1960s continuing through the 2050s. The original design being from the 1950s.
That said, B-52s likely have a lighter overall duty-cycle, are subject to risks not typical of most (though not all) airliners (hostile enemy fire), and yes, face consequences of incidents beyond the scope of commercial aviation, though my understanding is that live nuclear weapons haven't been carried as a routine practice since the 1968 Thule Air Base incident and the immediate discontinuation of Operation Chrome Dome:
A handy website [1] notes at least a couple of B-52 nuclear incidents. In 1961, a B-52 carrying nuclear weapons broke up in mid-air over North Carolina; the bombs did not detonate [2]. In 1966, a B-52 crashed due to a mid-air collision with a refueling tanker over Spain. In this case, the non-nuclear explosives in two of the nuclear weapons detonated, scattering radioactive material [3].
So I would not say "zero nuke detonations". And your .00001% failure rate (I didn't check your math) is not meaningful unless compared to the failure rate of other aircraft. The B-52 is impressive, but not flawless.
Most people would not refer to the incident at Palomares as a "nuke detonation," since there was no nuclear detonation. No fissile reaction etc, just conventional explosives that are part of the weapons trigger. To call it a "nuke detonation" is disingenuous.
That's not the definition of subjective. When GP says "That’s not subjective; you just made it up." it means that talking about airplane safety (which can obviously be objectively measured with things like crashes per landing/takeoff, crashes per mile, etc.) with the moniker "it's subjectively the safest" doesn't make any sense.
It would be like saying "That plane is subjectively the heaviest" or "Today is subjectively the hottest day on record" - no, it's not subjective, you just made it up.
1: of, relating to, or constituting a subject: such as
- a - obsolete : of, relating to, or characteristic of one that is a subject especially in lack of freedom of action or in submissiveness
- b - : being or relating to a grammatical subject
especially : NOMINATIVE
2: of or relating to the essential being of that which has substance, qualities, attributes, or relations
3
- a: characteristic of or belonging to reality as perceived rather than as independent of mind : PHENOMENAL
— compare OBJECTIVE sense 2a
- b: relating to or being experience or knowledge as conditioned by personal mental characteristics or states
4
- a(1): peculiar to a particular individual : PERSONAL
subjective judgments
- (2): modified or affected by personal views, experience, or background
a subjective account of the incident
- b: arising from conditions within the brain or sense organs and not directly caused by external stimuli
subjective sensations
- c: arising out of or identified by means of one's perception of one's own states and processes
a subjective symptom of disease
— compare OBJECTIVE sense 2c
I completely disagree with this.
I subjectively make my statement based on that data I have available to ME*
Objective would be I have failure data in front of me.
Now, I personally have heard of far fewer B-52 accidents in my lifetime, and the plane is almost double mine, and as such, I deem it safe as heck.
Also, guess what - B-52s carry nukes not passengers.
How many nukes have gone off for a B-52 crash vs how many lives have been lost via commercial crashes?
Also, I come from a nuke family, and an air force family. My grandfather was one of the designers of Hanford and my brother was head of the tenth medical wing and flight surgeon to the joint chiefs, and my dad best friend was sec of energy... in charge of nukes...
I assume you're talking about lifespan? The B-52 may have been in the air for a long time (though only 15 years longer than the 737), but it has also been flying in much smaller quantities; there have only ever been ~750 B-52s built, while there have been over 10K 737s built. And in addition, a commercial airliner is usually in the air for a much higher percentage of its lifespan than any military airplane.
So for example, the 737-600/700/800/900 series has had 9 accidents (6 full-loss equivalents)... over 100 million flights.
Accident rate info for the B-52 is harder to come by, especially since a lot of the "accidents" are complications from battle damage in Vietnam, but I'm seeing 10 peacetime full-loss incidents just among those that have their own Wikipedia pages:
> that they have been carrying nukes about for the past 50 years and that we havent seen a singular nuclear accident with them.
As other commenters have noted, this is more a testament to the phenomenal safety of nuclear weapons; they've been blown off the top of exploding ICBMs, hit the ground and the water at high speeds in crashing bombers, and generally gone through a LOT of abuse without going off.
IIRC atomic explosions are intrinsically difficult things to set off. I suppose the lensing explosive might go off and blow around nasty chunks, particulates, metal vapour perhaps, without actually producing a nuclear explosion of any sort.
Yup - though there are still safety problems, especially when it comes to inputs that might set off the trigger circuitry e.g. a lightning strike might have set off some early weapons. See Eric Schlosser's Command and Control for a history of nuclear weapons safety.
(BTW - even a fizzle can have the force of a pretty large conventional bomb. e.g. the first North Korean nuclear test, which probably fizzled, had a yield of something like 1kt TNT-equivalent, and the failed attempts to make a uranium hydride bombs still yielded something like 200t TNT-equivalent.)
> As other commenters have noted, this is more a testament to the phenomenal safety of nuclear weapons
Exactly, there were numerous nuclear accidents with B-52s, but due to the safety of nuclear warheads, no explosions. Googling the phrase “b-52 nuclear accidents” shows a long list of them.
Ok, I'll bite: your original comment wasn't useful at all, and didn't push the conversation forward. Making a baseless suggestion that the B-52 is the "safest machine in history" is not useful. You presented no evidence for this claim, and used "subjective" as a weasel word to avoid responsibility for what you were saying.
And then, incredibly, you make a -- reasonable -- assertion as to how you would determine a plane's safety and reliability, but then don't actually bother to try to apply that to the B-52. And then someone downthread uses something similar to your methodology (while presenting hard numbers and sources) to prove you wrong that the B-52 is the safest plane ever.
So my subjective opinion is that you've provided nothing of value to this conversation, and that is why you've been downvoted.
Oh, and calling people "cowards" when you don't like what they're saying or doing? If you want to invoke "old timers" on HN, you might as well at least pay attention to the site guidelines. As someone who has had an account here for 10 years (funny coincidence that you and I created our accounts within a week of each other), you should be well aware of them.
However, the NG also has an excellent safety record, and 35000 cycles is equivalent to 5 flights (takeoff & landing) every day for 10 years. So while this may lead to extra checks on older aircraft, it's highly unlikely to cause a MAX-style global grounding.