Why do only airlines, not other passenger carriers, seem cursed by murder-suicide scenarios?

[Panich52]

Maddow pointed out at least 5 instances similar to Germanwings case where a pilot or co-pilot tried to intentionally crash the plane.

Bus drivers, railroad engineers, trolley & subway conductors all are responsible for ferrying passengers and have the capability to create a disaster. Yet I couldn't find a record of this intentional tragedy occuring anywhere but on an airplane.

What is it about planes that seem to make them more vulnerable? Is it just the idea that a plane crash draws so much more media attention, thereby increasing job stress (or desired post mortem noteriety)?

Anyone else thought of this?

[NutmegYankee]

1. No guarantee of death on other modes?

The speeds are vastly different.

[Liberal_in_LA]

7. agreed

[treestar]

2. You might be onto it with media attention

And an airplane is more vulnerable to the thought process, at least. You may be more likely to be killed in a car, but car accidents can be nonfatal and in fact are most of the time. Plane accidents are rarely nonfatal.

Being the most modern way to travel, too, means being a pilot has a bigger mystique than being a train or truck driver. Thus you can imagine more stress on getting and keeping the job.

Makes me think of the cruise line where the captain was showing off and the ship sank and people got killed. And yet a suicidal captain couldn't use the ship to kill self and passengers - how would they do that? A plane is relatively small and moves at a faster rate.

[uppityperson]

13. Indeed. A lot of people dying in one moment is much more dramatic than a bunch separately

90 people die every day in the USA from car crashes. Granted not all on purpose, but still that is a lot and few are covered in the media. Or not in a big way.

Being in a metal tube thousands of feet in the air, you lose any control of your situation, are entirely reliant on the flight crew which causes anxiety in many people. Having something go wrong, it is all out of your hands and really scary. I think this contributes a lot to the coverage.

An airplane is much more vulnerable than a ship. I've laughed at the thought of highjacking a ferry and...what? driving it into a dock? Yes, some will get hurt and/or killed but it is more difficult to do so. Overloaded ferries are much more dangerous and get media attention when they sink, but even then they don't get the coverage a plane does. I wonder if a murderous cruise ship crew sinking their ship would get the attention a plane does? I doubt it.

[catnhatnh]

3. Because...

...there are few opportunities to slam an Amtrak into a mountain at 500mph?

[Ilsa]

4. Of course there have been suicides

By drivers parking on the tracks and waiting for the train. I don't know if they were trying to derail and murder others though.

[lumberjack_jeff]

5. Because intentionally crashing a train, bus or ferry would hurt. n/t

[Nye Bevan]

6. +1. Crashing a plane into a mountain is a guaranteed instant death.

Crashing a bus might not even be fatal.

[pinboy3niner]

8. Plane crashes are more dramatic and get major media coverage

They also play on the fear of flying/crashing out of the sky.

[LadyHawkAZ]

9. Acrophobia

People are afraid of heights in large numbers and the idea of being in a crashing plane is terrifying; also, public perception of risk is different for planes than it is for ground-based transportation. If you're trying to trigger mass fear, you do it with something the masses will fear.

[ND-Dem]

10. because planes can be remote controlled? because warren buffett owns one of the biggest

freight carriers and a lot of the track and nobody wants to cut into his profit margins?
because only poor people ride busses so they're not a good venue for political assassinations, or instilling fear in the top 20%?

[Retrograde]

11. Well, trains tend to go where the tracks go

which makes it somewhat more difficult to commandeer them and crash them into a bridge or something. Not impossible, but I would think it would require some skill. OTOH, the local commuter line is a suicide magnet.

Bus drivers have a little more leeway, but the worst I've encountered were drivers taking it out on the passengers with abrupt starts and stops, causing a few to tumble into the aisles.

I would think flying a commercial passenger plane carries a lot of stress: in addition to worrying about the mechanics of flying, there are weather conditions that affect you, scheduling issues (not just delays, but going from time zone to time zone every day or two can screw up your body rhythms), pay issues. With surface transportation, if the bus/train/subway isn't working correctly you can just stop it and the worst case is that you're stuck in the middle of nowhere, but at least on terra firma. With an airplane you have to bring it down with as many of the people - including yourself - as intact as possible.

Also, plane crashes tend to be all or nothing: there are a few with limited fatalities, but for the most part it's either the Sullenberger situation, where everybody walks away, or a more typical crash, where everyone on board is killed. Compare with two recent train crashes in the US, where a few people were killed, more were injured, but most were unhurt.

[karadax]

12. No barriers in the sky.

Busses and trains have many obstacles that can get in the way. There are also more points of control in other modes of mass transit. Switching tracks, raising and lowering gates, etc. In a plane it's open sky.

[arely staircase]

15. well there is the, you know, earth. that is a real big object planes can run in to.

Or is it 'into'?

[arely staircase]

14. you may have the nail on the head

bus crashes wouldn't get the media attention.