Jeff Wise
Slate
New York, NY, United States
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Past articles by Jeff:
Is Elon Musk Right That Flight Tracking Is an Invasion of Privacy?
There’s a much simpler way for Musk to keep his travels secret. → Read More
How the American Fervor for Deregulation Contributed to the 737 Max Crashes
These few hundred deaths are a reminder of why the public is ill-served by calls to cut oversight of potentially dangerous businesses. → Read More
How a Bad Business Decision May Have Made Boeing’s 737 Max Vulnerable to Crashes
Where Boeing might have gone wrong. → Read More
Self-driving car safety: Rules and regulations
Before they can transform our roads, self-driving cars need rules. But how can we formulate regulations for a technology that doesn't fully exist yet? → Read More
When machines go rogue
What’s happening inside our algorithms? What happens when those algorithms control our cars and planes? Pretty soon, we may have no idea. → Read More
Air travel is terrible for the environment. Can new technology change that?
Why it's so hard to build a greener airplane. → Read More
The 2013 Airplane Crash That Is Eerily Similar to the Germanwings Tragedy
The initial evidence suggests that the first officer of Germanwings Flight 4U 9525, a 27-year-old German named Andreas Lubitz, locked himself in the cockpit and flew the plane into the ground, deliberately killing himself and the 149 others on board. It’s hard to overemphasize how unusual this is—nothing like this... → Read More
What the AirAsia Disappearance Does and Does Not Have in Common With Malaysia Airlines 370
May 8, 2014. Malaysia Airlines 370 takes off from Kuala Lumpur, heads north, and disappears 40 minutes into its flight. Dec. 28, 2014. AirAsia 8501 takes off from Surabaya, Indonesia, heads north, and disappears about 40 minutes into its flight. Are the events coincidental? Is there something about Southeast Asian... → Read More
My Mea Culpa on Flight 370
When Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went missing this past March, Slate asked me to cover the peculiar news event. I happily obliged. Two days after my first piece ran, the story took a remarkable turn. The Malaysian government announced that signals received by Inmarsat indicated that the plane had wound... → Read More
I Was Wrong. The Missing Malaysian Plane Definitely Went South.
Two weeks ago, after months of mounting public pressure, Inmarsat and the Malaysian government finally released the raw satellite data that had been received from the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Most of the data dump proved unrevealing. But tucked away amid 47 pages of detailed communications logs and explanatory... → Read More
The Fuzzy Math Behind the Search for MH370
Five weeks into the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, more than $30 million has been spent scouring great swatches of the southern Indian Ocean. Yet searchers have still not found a single piece of physical evidence such as wreckage or human remains. Last week, Australian authorities said they... → Read More
Two Steps Forward, Two Steps Back in Missing Airliner Search
For a while, it seemed as if the search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was unfolding the way that these things generally do: a few tantalizing clues were about to yield tangible evidence, the wreckage would be located, the black box data would be analyzed, and the mystery would... → Read More
The Evidence That Flight MH370 Crashed Isn’t Wreckage. It’s Math.
For the relatives of passengers aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the announcement by the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on Monday must have registered as a double shock. First there was the fact that their loved ones were dead: “The past few weeks have been heartbreaking; I know this news... → Read More
New Information Narrows Missing Airliner’s Flight Path
In a case that is swirling with uncertainties, a few pieces of evidence have stood apart for seeming reliability. Among them was the revelation last Saturday by Malaysia Prime Minister Najib Razak that his country’s investigators, in collaboration with U.S. authorities, had analyzed an electronic ping that MH370 had broadcast... → Read More
MH370 and the Sea of Uncertainty
For a second day, ships and aircraft scoured a patch of sea 1,500 miles southwest of Australia, looking for two large pieces of debris that were spotted by satellite five days earlier. The search came up empty-handed, even as evidence remained scant that the debris was even wreckage from missing... → Read More
Missing Airliner Debris Believed Spotted. But Answers Could Still Be Years Away.
Australian authorities have announced that satellite images taken of a stretch of ocean 1,550 miles southwest of Perth, Australia, are believed to show floating debris that could be part of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. “It is probably the best lead we have right now,” said John Young, a spokesman... → Read More
A “Startlingly Simple Theory” About the Missing Airliner is Sweeping the Internet. It’s Wrong.
Chris Goodfellow doesn’t have much patience for the uncertainty concerning Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. The instrument-rated Florida pilot found the theories and countertheories mooted on outlets like CNN “almost disturbing.” (I’ve appeared on CNN to discuss Flight 370, but I’ll try not to take Goodfellow’s remarks personally.) So he set about... → Read More
Why Didn’t the Missing Airliner’s Passengers Phone for Help?
One of the most commonly asked questions we’ve received from Slate readers is: Why didn’t the passengers aboard missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 use their cell phones to call for help? We all remember United Flight 93, whose passengers communicated with the ground by phone after the plane was hijacked... → Read More
Why I Think It’s Very Possible That the Missing Airliner Is in Central Asia
I’ve been covering the story of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 for four days now, and it’s settled into a rhythm. Every day, new evidence points to a conclusion that beforehand would have seemed laughably absurd. We publish an analysis of the situation that seems most likely to us. Readers... → Read More
Missing Airliner Apparently Flew to Central Asia. Could the Passengers Still Be Alive?
At a press conference today in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak confirmed what many, including Slate, had already inferred about the fate of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: that it had not succumbed to an accident but instead been diverted as a result of “deliberate action by someone... → Read More