Binge watched Mayday boxed set then took a commercial flight

We call the series Air Crash Investigations over here but I think it's released in the US as Mayday: Air Disaster. Excellent series, for the most part fills one with respect for all the terrific minds and attitudes in the industry but also tends to make one a touch nervous about the company policies and regional deficiencies in some aspects of the industry, where public safety comes second to shareholder returns. It displays both responsible professionalism and a complete lack of any professionalism or responsibility all mixed within the same industry. Get on the right plane and safety is as advertised, get on the wrong one that looks just the same and all concept of safety is deliberately treated like a complete joke for an expendable public to play out the punchline. Welcome to commercial aviation.

The 787 I took from Melbourne to Singapore was terrific. I'm a bit of a technical guy and felt immediately confident when I heard the engines spool for take off and how smooth and tight they sounded mechanically. This was obviously either a brand new aircraft or one that's maintained in brand new condition. A great flight.

The A320 to Phuket was a completely different kettle of fish, my palms were sweating the whole flight. Bearing noise, rattling, a metallic scraping whine, terrible vibration all the way through take off and climb and until about 20mins into cruise. Where the 787 I'd have given a generous 0.01% chance of engine failure, these engines I gave a solid 15% chance at least one would roll back along the way. These engines are not supposed to sound like that or vibrate like that. It's obviously a very heavily overworked, short haul aircraft bought used from a major operator by a regional airline and my impression, given how common this story is described by the aforementioned series is they just run it until it breaks, don't maintain anything, don't spend anything on it, falsify necessary paperwork and scrap it when it can't fly anymore, fingers crossed that it didn't kill anyone getting there. But they do.

It's not so much just the engines that had me concerned but if the engines are that badly in need of a complete tear down maintenance and still flying, how bad are the rest of the vital airbus systems? In one episode of ACI/Mayday a regional Asian airbus operator simply refused to overhaul a computer fault which crews had consistently reported for more than a year before the aircraft crashed and killed everyone on board. Investigators discovered it was a broken solder (which began a chain of events leading to the crash). But y'know they wanted to keep it operating constantly with no down time for repairs or maintenance and essentially pressure ground crews to falsify paperwork and aircrews to put up and shut up, which isn't difficult because they clearly hire cheap labour on both counts anyway, I think less because of wages which doesn't actually amount to much even if you doubled those, but because less competence means less confidence so less arguments when something is wrong. You can put an idiot in charge if he keeps a low bar on the employees and the idiot still feels superior, because the bar is so low. Kind of a statement about all employment industries there, investment, ie. money starts a business, not qualification so bosses have no requirement whatsoever to be in any way qualified to be in charge, but are. You do get awesome owners/bosses, Lauda Air, that guy breathed professionalism and personal responsibility. Many major operators simply can't afford the stocks hit of a bad reputation, so give it a shot at least. But man, some of these regionals scare me not just by implication from tv documentaries but now from personal experience.

I wanted to tell the flight crew their engines on that A320 were rooted. I wouldn't drive a car with an engine that sounded like that without knowing I'll be calling a tow truck. And as mentioned the associated concern is how bad are the rest of the systems?

Really needed to vent that. I don't have a lot of people to talk to and it kept kicking around my head. I love flying but that was terrifying.

I haven't seen anything terribly bad, although one of the planes I was on recently had a loud buzzing sound from the engines. Probably not a good sign, but it was otherwise ok it seemed. Also each plane has a bit of a different sound and it was present a few days later on another similar aircraft.

I have seen some pretty dilapidated interiors, which doesn't exactly inspire confidence, but I made it.

For me, Aeroflot surprised me with some of the newest, nicest aircraft I've been on, Air France was also very nice. The budget Lufthansa flights were mediocre on the shorthauls. UIA a few years ago was pretty rough, but the last few trips I made they seemed to be maintaining their aircraft better.

What was the company operating the B787, just to check the engine type ?

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/serious-norwegian-787-trent-failure-traced-to-blade-460649/

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