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> The "safe" recommendation is to keep all planes in the sky regardless of suspected safety issues because alternative transportation is not safer than a dangerous airplane.

You're presumably taking the average deaths per miles and applying it in the sense of "those people would drive and that's more dangerous."

...that's....not how that works.

You assume:

* they would take alternate transportation, instead of canceling the trip or booking another flight not on a MAX. At the time there were just 387 MAX aircraft in the world in service.

* that said transportation would be passenger cars. Trains and busses are 10x (or more) safer than passenger cars per passenger mile. They're so safe that the danger to a passenger is basically insignificantly higher compared to commercial jet flights (and by the way, the industry very conveniently separates out "commuter" flights, which are FAR more dangerous.)

* that the overall safety of the commercial jet fleet is applicable to flights on a specific model of jet, which were clearly more dangerous, with not just two crashes in close proximity, but several close calls and almost certainly numerous other incidents that went unnoticed or unreported




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