r/interestingasfuck • u/thinkofanamefast • 18h ago
Missiles Are Now the Biggest Killer of Airline Passengers
https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/aa5785e7-acdc-3234-9861-1edb1db62ac9/missiles-are-now-the-biggest.html3.5k
u/Akkinak 18h ago
"Russian" missiles. No other fucker is doing this shit.
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u/Raving_Lunatic69 16h ago
Roughly 82 incidents in the last 100 years. It is surprising how often Soviet and Russian forces are involved. But in the big picture, they're hardly alone.
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u/TongsOfDestiny 15h ago
Tbf it seems like a lot of those incidents were either hostilities between states at war, or with the intent of killing a specific political figure believed to be on the flight.
Heinous crimes however you cut it, but the loss of the Malaysian and Azerbaijani airliners feels so indiscriminate and that makes it all the scarier
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u/Pizzadude 10h ago
Iran Air Flight 655 was a commercial flight operated by Iran Air that regularly flew from Bandar Abbas, Iran to Dubai, UAE. On 3 July 1988 the aircraft was shot down by the U.S. Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes which fired a RIM-66 Standard surface-to-air missile. The airplane was destroyed between Bandar Abbas and Dubai; all 290 passengers and crew died, including 66 children. USS Vincennes was in Iranian waters at the time of the attack. IR655, an Airbus A300 on an ascending flight path, was mistaken by Vincennes as a descending Iranian Grumman F-14 Tomcat
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u/PM_ME_TANOOKI_MARIO 9h ago edited 9h ago
Not sure what you're trying to prove, but a rough count on the linked page shows 2 shootdowns by the US, none in the last 30 years, and 9 by the USSR/Russia/Russian-affiliated forces, 2 in the last 10 years. There's a pretty gross discrepancy there.
Edit: and to be clear, the Iran Air shootdown is a horrifying story, and I think it's reprehensible that the US has weaseled out of ever accepting formal responsibility. My point is that this sort of whataboutism plays down that Russia has played a consistently outsized role in airliner shootdown statistics.
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u/Excellent_Speech_901 7h ago
The US settled $131.8 million in damages and on 5 July 1988 President Ronald Reagan expressed regret; when directly asked if he considered the statement an apology, Reagan replied, "Yes". That's as formal acceptance of responsibility as you'll ever get from a government.
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u/suddenly_seymour 5h ago
36 years ago vs last week... I wonder which one is more relevant to the current state of aviation safety?
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u/Unfazed_One 12h ago
Tbf it seems like a lot of those incidents were either hostilities between states at war...
Not sure I'm understanding you. To be FAIR, they are sometimes not as bad if there is a war going on close by? By this logic, wouldn't these 2 two flights you listed be in this "fair" category as well? Russia IS at war with Ukraine....
Heinous crimes however you cut it, but the loss of the Malaysian and Azerbaijani airliners feels so indiscriminate and that makes it all the scarier
Why aren't the other flights indiscriminate? They are not military planes.
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u/TongsOfDestiny 12h ago
I didn't say a war going on nearby, I said between states at war. There's a huge list on that Wikipedia page for the 1940s because the Germans and Japanese were shooting down British, French, and Chinese flights (among others). So yeah, when you're already at war with a country, shooting down their planes is the status quo. Russia wasn't at war with Malaysia, and they're not at war with Azerbaijan, which is what makes the attacks acts of terror.
As for why the other attacks aren't indiscriminate, targeting civilians is an age-old tactic, there should be no surprise that flying an airliner through contested air space puts it at risk. That same risk shouldn't exist for planes belonging to neutral parties and the fact that it does is especially problematic
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u/grmpygnome 16h ago
What's up with Japanese fighters strafing civilian aircraft after shooting them down? Those fellas really wanted to make sure those civilians were dead.
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u/CommunicationSharp83 14h ago
I mean they were at war with China at that point and probably thought it was an enemy transport aircraft
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u/khizoa 14h ago
82 out of how many? Just curious
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u/kingfofthepoors 14h ago
Years Deaths Incidents.
1970 2,226 298
1971 2,228 271
1972 3,346 344
1973 2,814 333
1974 2,621 270
1975 1,856 316
1976 2,419 277
1977 2,449 340
1978 2,042 356
1979 2,511 328
1980 2,203 325
1981 1,506 272
1982 1,958 250
1983 1,921 238
1984 1,273 234
1985 2,968 261
1986 1,763 238
1987 2,064 277
1988 2,313 254
1989 2,507 265
1990 1,631 261
1991 1,957 240
1992 2,299 266
1993 1,760 275
1994 2,018 231
1995 1,828 266
1996 2,796 251
1997 1,768 232
1998 1,721 225
1999 1,150 221
2000 1,586 198
2001 1,539[a] 210
2002 1,418 197
2003 1,233 201
2004 767 178
2005 1,463 194
2006 1,298 192
2007 981 169
2008 952 189
2009 1,108 163
2010 1,130 162
2011 828 154
2012 800 156
2013 459 138
2014 1,328 122
2015 898 123
2016 629 102
2017 399 101
2018 1,040 113
2019 578 125
2020 463 90
2021 414 113
2022 357 100
2023 229 82
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u/el_diego 14h ago
That formatting error really makes the mid 70s to mid 80s look like an insanely horrific time
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u/Darksirius 11h ago
When I first glanced at it, I thought it was death-incidents and I was like... 2.2 million?!
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u/khizoa 13h ago
thanks for the attempt. but this doesnt answer my question on how many of the 82 incidents were from russia.
these numbers also dont make sense... if that 3rd column is suppose to be incidents.... then why does the original comment say "82 incidents in the last 100 years"? and the wiki link at first glance, supports that?
yours shows 82 incidents just LAST YEAR alone. and when added up, is in the 1000s?
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u/Raving_Lunatic69 11h ago
8 of the 82. To be clear, I was saying there were 82 shoot-down incidents in total, not that Russia had 82 incidents. I could see how you might misinterpret that from the way I wrote it.
I will add that after going back through and reading each closely to count, my earlier breeze-thru probably picked up a lot of references to Soviet-made aircraft and SAM systems which made it seem more prevalent.
That said; 10%. I didn't see any other single entity with that many, but I also wasn't specifically counting for anyone else.
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u/pornographic_realism 14h ago
Some of that is just going to be because Russia is something like 16% of the world's land area. Statistically you'd expect them to be relatively high in proportion. Obviously states like Burundi or Brunei aren't firing off missiles at random airborne targets either so there's quite a few countries ypu would expect to be absent from the list.
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u/Public_Front_4304 15h ago
It's almost as though Russians and buyers of Russian arms are noticeably worse than other governments.
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u/pm-me-nothing-okay 14h ago edited 12h ago
Thats an extremely messy and very argueable metric to use, i mean america also started an illegal war and bombed metaphorical and literal busloads of brown children for the past 2 decades and now moved onto just doing it by proxy using the israelis to continue the same trend.
How fast people seem to forget nowadays.
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u/Public_Front_4304 13h ago edited 13h ago
And it's just a coincidence that our opponents had Russian arms?
Or is it not imperialism when Russia does it?
I think it's possible that you are pro imperialism.
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u/pm-me-nothing-okay 13h ago
Or maybe im a realist and your just dictated by your lifetime of indoctrination of being told your the savior of the world and you finally came to believe it, when really your not all that different from the other side when it comes to the poor people being blown up.
Maybe we just need a larger sample size of underprivileged third world citizens to fully know the answer to this one though.
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u/Public_Front_4304 13h ago
I dunno, your comment history seems to go pretty hard on excusing Imperialism. Just from the other empire. Do you believe that you haven't been indoctrinated?
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u/iggygrey 12h ago
Main cuz they can't get or afford Western kit.
The West beats Russia shit like like Putin beats his(insert ur answer here) with smoke and mirrors.
Western kit turns RF shit into dog chow.
For example, RN Moscoba (Ukraine unNavy Poseidon Chow), T-90 tank (Leopard chow), A-50 (Patriot Chow), S-300/400/500 (Storm Shadow Chow) and everything else RF made (ATACMS Chow).
Your homework is done for you.
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u/OforFsSake 18h ago
Ehh, in the name of accuracy here, I gotta bring up the USS Vincennes.
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u/Akkinak 18h ago
Correction, nobody else is doing this shit this millennium.
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u/Julianus 17h ago
Iran shot down a Ukrainian airliner in 2020 killing 176 people.
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u/realnanoboy 17h ago
But whose missile did they use?
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u/Deftlet 15h ago
That's hardly the point
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u/Roflkopt3r 13h ago
It is. Russia sells it's weapons without any scrutiny of how they will be deployed. NATO isn't clean and innocent either, but generally take stronger precautions and continue to impose some control over their customers that genuinely reduces the rate of abuse and lethal accidents.
The fact that these shoot downs are centered around Russian weapons is thus no coincidence. It's Russia and Russian-aligned countries.
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u/ic33 15h ago
It's a little bit of the point-- it's evidence that Russian SAM systems don't give their operators enough information and don't have strong enough procedures to prevent this. Coupled with shitty operator training by countries employing these systems, it's a recipe for disaster.
(You can absolutely negligently shoot down an airliner with a Patriot system, but it's a fair bit harder to be unaware).
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u/tenoclockrobot 11h ago
So if I, a private citizen, shot down a plane with a russian missile system, its russias fault?
Just seems a bit off
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u/realnanoboy 11h ago
If Russia is selling SAMs to private citizens, then it's partly Russia's fault, yes. They're not very picky about weapons customers, though, and that's the problem. (Yes, NATO countries are far from innocent on this one, but there is a big difference by degrees.)
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u/OforFsSake 18h ago
Fair assessment for sure.
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u/SoyMurcielago 17h ago
Hanse Davion would never do something like this amirite?
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u/Aromatic-Assistant73 16h ago
We just shot down one of our own fighter jets. Airlines are not safe.
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u/Reddit_reader_2206 16h ago edited 15h ago
Iran too....
However, the point is, Russia does this often. Others may make this mistake once, before radically altering all procedures to avoid it from happening ever again.
If you want to be pedantic, that detail is more important. The USA is still a good actor. ruzzia is obviously not.
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u/OforFsSake 15h ago
Oh, no argument on either point. It's just that if the discussion is to be had, accurate info should be presented.
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u/NotAnAIOrAmI 18h ago
Meh, many of those people would have died by now anyway, and I heard a couple of them were mean to puppies.
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u/QuitsDoubloon87 17h ago
What are you a professional journalist for the New York Times or for The Onion?
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u/PensionResponsible46 18h ago
Ukraine-International-Airlines Flight 752
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u/qalup 16h ago
Ukraine also shot down a Tu-154 over the Black Sea using an S200 during military exercises in 2001. Killed 78 people.
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u/denk2mit 7h ago
During an exercise on a Russian-controlled range. Where range safety would therefore have been a Russian job
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u/Techn0ght 13h ago
I wonder how Russia would do if everyone stopped flights to or from Russia, sort of like their recent tests of cutting off the internet, to see if this reduces passenger airline shootdowns. This of course would have to include any country that continues to allow them to land.
Sorry Russia, you fucked around for far too long and finally found out.
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u/kc2syk 12h ago
Russian commercial air traffic is already banned in many countries since 2022. Now, the only time I see russian planes in the western hemisphere is on their Moscow-Havana flights. Or if they have a diplomatic mission to the UN or Washington. https://www.flightradar24.com/data/airlines/su-afl/routes
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u/OopsAllLegs 14h ago
Interesting how the world seems to collectively agree that this is okay.
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u/Horrific_Necktie 11h ago
I thinks it's less "this is okay" and more russia having the general attitude of "what the fuck are you gonna do about it?"
And...yeah. what the fuck are we gonna do about it? Likely nothing.
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u/Tersiv 18h ago
*Russian State Terrorism not missiles...
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u/Kevundoe 18h ago
*Russian state terrorists using missiles
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u/Im_Balto 17h ago
*state terrorists using Russian missiles
(Iran did it in 2020 using a Russian system)
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u/Chokedee-bp 17h ago
Do the Russians even know what they are shooting at when they murder these passengers airliners? I would think all the passenger airlines have active tracking broadcast to the whole world so all know they are civilian please don’t shoot me.
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u/mrkrabz1991 13h ago
I don't believe it's on purpose. If you listen to the radio communication immediately after they shot down MH17 in 2014, the commander is on the radio screaming at them, saying the wreckage is a passenger plane.
I think the issue is the average Russian soldier is incredibly undertrained, and they just shoot at anything in the sky that they don't know is their own.
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u/petesakan 17h ago
The Russian pilot that shot down the Korean airliner still believe that he shot down a spy plane.
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u/Fickle-Sir 16h ago
Coping. The Russian pilot that shot down an American airliner decades ago says the same thing.
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u/Virel_360 13h ago
The sad thing is satellites can get a much better view than any plane ever could thus making it completely ridiculous that they would try to send a passenger airliner to spy on Russia lol
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u/fly-guy 17h ago
Whiel airplanes do broadcast their identity, I highly doubt the launchers can either see it or do anything with it.
If the latter wasn't true every enemy would be faking such a signal rendering the entire idea useless
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u/CO-RockyMountainHigh 16h ago
IFF exists for this exact reason and any anti air battery SHOULD have access to the air traffic control secondary radar to prevent senseless loss of life like this.
Even if an enemy plane was squawking and responding as a civilian there is secondary information like radar cross section, altitude, heading, and speed that can determine if it’s a civilian jet or an F-35.
But mistakes happen. The US Navy mistook a F-18 as a MISSILE and shot it down the other day.
The world needs to chill out and cool down before one of these incidents starts an even larger war.
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u/Autolycus25 16h ago
No, this is horribly wrong. Every modern anti-aircraft missile system relies on transponders for de-confliction. If they didn’t, we would see far more of these incidents. Unfortunately, it’s also true that the Russian systems and operators are not as good at this as they should be.
And fwiw, it is a war crime to hide military assets behind civilian signals of any type.
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u/lord_braleigh 16h ago
Anyone can go to the internet and look up the position of any civilian aircraft, up to and including Taylor Swift’s private jet.
With all these people watching, how could a military aircraft pretend to be a civilian aircraft without anyone catching on?
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u/Techn0ght 13h ago
Fake credentials. Oh, we're just a private jet, not a spy plane, please don't shoot. That's exactly how Russia sees any plane they didn't authorize.
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u/lord_braleigh 12h ago
But they did authorize this flight. All flights, commercial or private, need to happen with the relevant governments’ consent over government-approved airspaces.
This was caused by incompetence. The system works well, it’s just that the people with the guns didn’t use it.
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u/Techn0ght 12h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
The Russian monitoring their early detection system said that if any of the regular trained military had been on duty when the EDS erroneously alerted to 5 missiles coming in from the USA they would have reported missile detection immediately and probably would have started a retaliatory strike. They follow orders for the most part regardless of consequences, they're afraid not to. You can see this with the ground forces attacking Ukraine. They get shot if they don't do exactly as they're told.
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u/lord_braleigh 10h ago
Cool story, but I don’t understand how it’s relevant to this situation. Anyone with an internet connection could have looked this flight up and seen that the aircraft was a commercial airliner on a regularly-scheduled flight with a reputable airline. That wasn’t true in Stanislav Petrov’s case.
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u/Techn0ght 4h ago
It's a statement on the Russia SOP and unwillingness of their soldiers to deviate from orders. I thought I had spelled that out. Do you need smaller words?
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u/oh_crap_BEARS 13h ago
No, because faking IFF just gets you shot down by friendly forces instead. (It’s also a war crime but let’s not pretend Russia cares.)
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u/MandrakeRootes 12h ago
Modern anti air weapons show this information for sure. The US-built automatic anti missile system C-RAM can decide based on cross section and transponder codes weather any contact is civilian. It does this with no human input.
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u/Chokedee-bp 5h ago
This comment is so stupid it’s hard to comprehend. So you think the Russian army will just shoot at any aircraft without first identifying if it is friendly or enemy, commercial or combat aircraft?
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u/ahall917 14h ago
In that scenario, you'd be reliant on both sides broadcasting truthful information.
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u/thebigbroke 14h ago
They made a Christmas ad recently of Santa being shot out the sky with a missile and saying that they won’t allow anything foreign in their airspace. If they don’t know they, most certainly, do not care either.
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u/minimag47 12h ago
You're asking the wrong question. It's not "do they know what they're shooting at" it's "do they care what they're shooting at".
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u/xwing_n_it 18h ago
Greedy Boeing execs are totally high-fiving each other right now.
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u/Amonamission 18h ago edited 18h ago
Tbf the aircraft that crashed was an
AirbusEmbraer, I would think theAirbusEmbraer execs would be happy that it wasn’t their doing more than BoeingEdit: correction
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u/Sunburys 13h ago
Embraer executives should be happy that the airplane has also proven to be as tough as a tank.
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u/TheHoodratHillbilly 16h ago
This strikes me as one of those weird “you’re more likely to get hit by a car crossing the street than struck by lightning or attacked by a shark” kind of things
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u/aj4ever 16h ago
How can I track flightpaths before purchasing an airline ticket?
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u/denk2mit 7h ago
If you’re flying from Europe to Asia, don’t do it with anyone but a European or American airline.
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u/Karter705 4h ago
As someone living in Singapore, I'm obliged to tell you that Singapore Airlines is the best airline on the planet.
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u/doomsayeth 14h ago
I read this as ‘Russia kills more airline passengers than the #2 reason does’ since the numbers got updated recently.
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u/coinstarhiphop 16h ago
Russian Media: Falling out of windows is now the biggest killer of airline passengers.
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u/NO_LOADED_VERSION 14h ago
RUSSIANS are the biggest killer of airline passengers.
These missiles dont spontaneously manifest do they.
Fucking wsj kissing authoritarian boots as always
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u/28-8modem 13h ago
Missiles Are Now the Biggest Killer of Airline Passengers
Russians Are Now the Biggest Killer of Airline Passengers
... fixed.
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u/crescentwings 11h ago
*russian missiles are now the biggest killer of airline passengers
Fixed it for you.
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u/SoyMurcielago 17h ago
Russian SAMs been shooting down aircraft since literally 1960 with Gary Powers’s flight
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u/LittleG0d 12h ago
This is not interesting as fuck. A sense of aroused curiosity is not what I get when I read this piece of information. It sounds like sad news to me, isn't there already a subreddit for news?
It doesn't make me feel like I really want to know more about the subject of what the biggest killer of airline passengers is.
I don't usually go looking for interesting subjects and go - yeah let me see how war is replacing other activities as a cause of death, should be pretty cool to know and a subject for conversation which is for sure going to get everybody's brain engaged in learning. Definitely not sad, concerned, worried and not in the mood for actually learning.
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u/I_have_questions_ppl 10h ago
You mean Russians. Russians are the biggest killer of airline passengers.
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u/Darnell2070 9h ago
Russia is 2 for in airline shootdowns since 2014
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u/dynamiteSkunkApe 1h ago
Will America re-enter the game now? https://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/04/world/downing-flight-655-us-downs-iran-airliner-mistaken-for-f-14-290-reported-dead.html
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u/fabiomb 7h ago
just for clarification, since 2014 there's a total of 497 fatalities in 3 shootings, two by Russia, one by their ally, Iran.
In total there's almost 1078 deaths in planes with 62 in land (outside the plane, people on land), so that's almost 46%, so it's not the biggest killer, but near to 50% is a LOT
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u/0erlikon 6h ago edited 6h ago
RUSSIAN missiles are the biggest killer of airline passengers
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u/dynamiteSkunkApe 1h ago
Anyone miss the times when it was US missiles? https://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/04/world/downing-flight-655-us-downs-iran-airliner-mistaken-for-f-14-290-reported-dead.html
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u/SasquatchOnSteroids 2h ago
TIL missiles don’t always have to go boom. I guess they can just pin hole… why would t they just use a .50 cal or something? Missiles seems expensive
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u/Sjrla 2h ago
- Missiles from Russia
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u/dynamiteSkunkApe 1h ago
We've entered a new era. It used to be that the US showdown passenger planes. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/04/world/downing-flight-655-us-downs-iran-airliner-mistaken-for-f-14-290-reported-dead.html
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u/Unfazed_One 16h ago edited 15h ago
Can't read article due to subscription-gated block.
"Missles are now the biggest killer of airline passengers."
Compared to what? Birds? Terrorism? Defects? Also, over what period of time? All-time? The last decade?
Im skeptical of the title, suggesting it as being the now all-time leading danger for airline passengers. Currently? Yeah it might be in Europe.
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u/CupidStunt13 18h ago
Taken as a positive, fewer planes crash nowadays due to pilot error, mechanical failure etc. Just try to avoid flights near certain dangerous regions and you’re good.