Just wanted to run this idea past folks.
If you generally boycott Boeing over their safety scandals or over their extreme right lobbying contributions that support that climate denying political party, but you find yourself taking a Boeing anyway (e.g. your employer books you on one), why not show up to board the plane wearing a wing suit?
The idea is to convey the idea that a panel can fall off at any moment, inconveniently suck you out, and you have a sudden unplanned need to fly on your own. A parachute is likely too bulky. It’s kind of a way to make a statement.
I’m not sure if the wing suit can be comfortable enough to sit in and actually simultaneously somewhat functional. Would we have to choose between sufficient comfort and sufficient gliding capability, or could we have both?
It doesn’t have to be ugly. Consider those Nepalese and African pants with knee-high crotches. Those are borderline wing suits for the bottom half. When legs are spread, it could reveal something like “Boeing passenger safety pants”.
I suppose the big question would be: would a Boeing pilot exercise their discretion and refuse to carry such a passenger?
Boeing is not simply an aircraft. It’s an infrastructure of aircraft, pilots, airlines, and flights.
I answered that question several years ago and it got censored on every Reddit venue it was posted to (so some of the figures would be different by now but the basic idea is the same):
(drafted in Jan.2017)
How progressive travellers can boycott Boeing and General Electric
Suppose you want to boycott Boeing. A Boeing aircraft is probably not on your shopping list, so you can’t simply scratch Boeing off your shopping list as easily as you can with a company like Dell, for example. But there are some things you can do to reduce money that ultimately feeds Boeing.
Boeing has a duopoly with Airbus (detailed on wikipedia).
Most airlines own both Boeing and Airbus products, so it would be impractical to extend the boycott to all airlines that have Boeing’s in their inventory. But there is a bias. Some airlines have a strong majority of Boeings in their fleet compared to Airbus. Here is a sampling of some of the large carriers:
I recommend boycotting airlines with a Boeing inventory over ~40%. In addition to avoiding Boeing-dominant airlines, it’s also a good idea to exclude flights on Boeing aircraft from your air travel search. Here’s how:
/-aircraft t:703 t:707 t:70F t:70M t:717 t:721 t:722 t:727 t:72B t:72C t:72F t:72M t:72S t:72X t:72Y t:731 t:732 t:733 t:734 t:735 t:736 t:737 t:738 t:739 t:73C t:73F t:73G t:73H t:73J t:73M t:73W t:73X t:73Y t:741 t:742 t:743 t:744 t:747 t:74C t:74D t:74E t:74F t:74H t:74J t:74L t:74M t:74N t:74R t:74T t:74U t:74V t:74X t:74Y t:752 t:753 t:757 t:75F t:75M t:75T t:75W t:762 t:763 t:764 t:767 t:76F t:76W t:76X t:76Y t:772 t:773 t:777 t:77F t:77L t:77W t:788 t:789 t:B72That will exclude all flights that make use of a Boeing aircraft from the search results. Why is that a good idea? A pilot is either a Boeing pilot or an Airbus pilot. Rarely is a pilot trained in both. Riding on a Boeing aircraft feeds Boeing pilots, who exclusively cator for Boeing products.
Commandline nerds who want to know how to derive that syntax may want to run this:
$ lynx -dump -nolist https://www.flugzeuginfo.net/table_accodes_iata_en.php | awk 'BEGIN{ORS=" ";} tolower($0) ~ /boeing/{print "t:"$1}'Don’t forget to prefix the
/-aircraft.Why boycott Boeing and General Electric?
See the rationale chart.
Boeing has made a deal with General Electric to ensure that some Boeing aircraft can only be fitted with GE engines. It turns out that General Electric (a former ALEC member) is itself very boycott-worthy anyway because it’s involved with the same evils as Boeing. Also note that Airbus does not contribute to any of the below-illustrated problems. It will not be immediately obvious to everyone why drug testing is such a bad idea. I suggest
this articlefor more detail.Note the Reddit links are all bad. Reddit moderators and/or Reddit bots censored the above info in like 3 different places (including an “unpopular opinions” subreddit and most ironically the “Boycott_Boeing” subreddit also censored it). All the air fleet links are now Cloudflared… the article needs to be updated and reworked to have links reachable from the open free world.
On Boeing flights you don’t have to open the door – the panels simply fall off. IIUC, the only reason no one was sucked out was because everyone close to the panel wore their seatbelt.
jesus, you used lot of words to admit that you actually can’t 😂
look at your list - what remains if you exclude anything with >40% of boeings? not much. and even after that, it is still a lottery.
not even selecting specific flight based on an aircraft type is going to help you, because airlines swap aircrafts routinely, same as bus operator would swap buses. bus has a problem, just take another one.
if something changes in the industry in will be battle behind the scenes and it will happen by airlines gradually buying more from one manufacturer at the expense of the other, not as a result of enlightened traveller’s action.
oh so you are preparing for one specific past war and you assume every future war will look exactly like that?
well in that specific case you are probably hurt from leaving the aircraft, your suit may be already damaged, and you are disoriented and subjected to temperatures of -50 degrees celsius. chances are you are already unconscious and won’t regain consciousness before hitting the ground. good luck with your circus trick.
You can’t see that 10 out of 19 on that list are <40% Boeing? If you fail that step, then boycotting Boeing is indeed hopeless for you. You should also be able to use your head and derive a cutoff that’s tuned for your local options. The 40% was a good threshold for that sample 7 years ago.
That list is a very small sample of airlines worldwide. And why are you trying to draw conclusions from figures that I said were 7 years old in 1st place? The guide is not going to do your homework for you. It shows you /how/ to derive the info and how to use it. It’s not written to give precise answers when some people live in regions where many of those airlines don’t even operate.
No, it is not the same as swapping buses. Bus drivers are versatile. They can drive a Saab bus just as well as a Mitsubishi. You can’t just take an arbitrary Airbus pilot and put them in a Boeing. Very few pilots are trained in both. So if you’re going to swap brands, you have to send off two pilots and bring in two others. And if your Boeing fleet is small (as my advice suggests), then you also have fewer Boeing pilots to be able to spontaneously call to duty. If you lose on the odds that a/c are not swapped, and you also lose on the odds that brands are not swapped, passengers have demanded not to fly on Boeing then they discover they boarded one, and airlines /have/ been accommodating anyway.
What a silly attempt to claim a Boeing boycott is impossible.
The ol’ “boycotts don’t work” claim… that never gets old, but there is always fresh evidence proving the contrary. Such as McDonald’s HQ recently buying up all the McD’s in Israel after the private owner offered free meals to Israeli solders which triggered an international boycott against the McDonald’s brand. Brand protection was important enough for McD’s to buy over 300 stores just to change the policy.
now go and count how many aircrafts from that list does that represent? when your jaw drop to the floor, don’t forget to pick it up.
mixed fleets are just norm in the industry. for a lot of reasons. period.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-well-known-airlines-by-fleets/
why am i dissing the list YOU BROUGHT UP TO SUPPORT YOUR ARGUMENT? because you brought it to support your argument.
guess what. there are no “airbus pilots”. pilots have type rating for specific aircraft, not for an “airbus”. for example a320 pilot can’t fly a330 (not unless he has both type ratings, which he usually doesn’t have).
and here comes the shock. guess what airlines who have lot of aircrafts also have? that’s right, they also have enough pilots for these aircrafts. and when they need to switch the aircraft, they also switch it with the appropriate crew. how cool is that? 😂
and that is definitely valid argument, because mcdonald and airlines have indeed the exact same business model. oh wait, they do not.
mcdonald’s are franchises and the hq owns the corporate brand and property and just kicks out the renter whenever he decides.
airliner has service life of 30+ years, so you don’t just swap them as buying new phone.
man, you obviously doesn’t have as deep knowledge of the problem as you think. why don’t you just accept this wasn’t your day and move on, instead of stirring up sh.t that wasn’t even core of the original problem (it was about your brilliant wing suit idea - remember?)?