Define Your Boundaries

From today’s Toronto Star we read the story (but by no means the end of the story) of the Concorde crash near Paris in July 2000.

This blog is about clear thinking, and you should know that I am an emotional persons; perhaps that’s why Clear Thinking is so important to me.

“The July 2000 crash outside Paris killed 113 people.” Reads the article in a plain statement.

The article goes on to say who/why/what the courts found guilty.

Yet I am struck by the date (9 July 2000) and the number of people who dies (113).

I’m going to let you do the math.

Law Courts regularly assign a monetary value to a human life; in part actuaries are roped in to use (a) age of person at death (b) probable life expectancy at death (c) probably earnings during the interval (d) emotional and other costs. Terrible though it is, we humans have decided that we can assign a dollar value to death.

For your calculation purposes you might start by assuming that the 113 people who died were influential and affluent business men, and that the cabin staff were young, intelligent, healthy, well-trained etc.

You will come up with a number of dollars. Set that to one side.

Now consider that, within minutes of the crash, all Concordes were grounded. On 10 April 2003 the announcement came that Concorde would be retired later that year; part of the retirement was attributed to a slump in sales following the crash. Concorde’s retirement flight was on 26 November 2003 after 27 years of commercial service.

Assume that the aircraft had another 10 years commercial service up its sleeve at the time of its retirement.

Now calculate the loss in earnings for staff stood down after the crash (including ticket-counter staff, catering services and so on), and the reduced staff needed between 2000 and 2003 and the permanent retrenchment cost after 2003.

Bear in mind that staff “over a certain age” would have found it hard to find a new permanent position, and will have slid to menial low-paying jobs, or just been loaded onto government pension schemes.

Which of the two costs (death, retrenchment) is higher?

If you feel up to it, consider the economic cost of the interruption in the development of supersonic and sub-orbital flight for generations to come.

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