They are so big and it seems like so much could go wrong yet they are statistically extremely successful.
In: Engineering
Former pilot (student) here with a bit of knowledge on air law.
Every rule is written in blood, is an expression the aviation business use. Meaning that every time something happens – they spend literally millions of $ to figure out exactly what happened. And then for instance FAA tells all aircraft manufactures/airlines than THAT particular bolt that caused this accident, needs to be changed on every aircraft – or they are not allowed to fly over USA.
ICAO is the governing body for much of this – which is the civil aviation part of the UN. Meaning that most laws pertaining aircrafts and how they are flown etc is the same. So a pilot can assume that landing in Spain will be pretty much the same as landing in Italy, and he can assume the ATC speaks english, and know, in details, the same lingo he knows on aviation and rules. And they all have the exact same education, knowing exactly how to speak to each other.
There will not be any mistakes made by the guy in Colombia filling up the aircraft with fuel thinking I meant gallons – no, we ALL agree on what units to use, everywhere. Because a few planes did go down because of some country thinking gallons while the Captain was thinking kgs, and so on. Every single aircraft disaster is treated 100x more closely than a car accident ie.
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