Air Travel Safety Concerns Abound Amid Multiple Recent Plane Crashes
The spate of recent plane crashes in North America has made air traffic control a priority for the Trump administration, which has begun taking controversial measures to improve the system. The plane crashes have also left travelers wondering, is air travel safe anymore?
Recent Plane Crashes
In less than a month, four major plane crashes have made headlines:
On February 17, a Delta flight from Minneapolis, MN crash landed in Toronto, skidding along the tarmac in flames and flipping over. Miraculously, everyone on the flight survived.
On February 6, a commuter flight disappeared near Nome, Alaska. The wreckage was found the following day, along with the bodies of 10 people who had been on board.
On January 31, a medical transport plane took off from a small airport near Philadelphia and subsequently crashed, killing the six people on board and one more on the ground.
On January 29, a commercial airliner collided with a military helicopter near Washington, DC, killing 67 people and making it the first major commercial plane crash since 2009.
The Trump Administrationâs Reaction
A few days before the January 29 crash near DC, President Donald Trump fired the heads of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Coast Guard before their terms were up. He also fired all the members of a key aviation security advisory group, citing a commitment to prevent misuse of funds.
Then the commercial airliner crashed on January 29, which quickly became politicized. Trump blamed previous administrations for implementing DEI in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), saying, “We must have only the highest standards for those who work in the aviation system. I changed the Obama standards from very mediocre at best to extraordinary.”
Several weeks later, the Trump administration started firing hundreds of FAA employees, mainly probationary personnel for radar and landing/navigational aid maintenance. Trump also fired FAA employees who had been working on a high-priority, classified early warning radar system that would be used by the Air Force in Hawaii to detect incoming missiles.
According to the Trump administration, no air traffic controllers or critical safety personnel were fired.
Charles Spitzer-Stadtlander, one of the fired employees who had been working on the classified project, blames his termination on his criticism of Elon Musk and X. Following Trumpâs inauguration, Spitzer-Stadtlander urged his friends and followers on social media to delete their X accounts, which, according to him, drew Trumpâs ire.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has defended Trumpâs moves and said there is no pattern behind the accidents â the main issue is improving US air traffic control quickly, as the FAA still has systems that ârun on floppy disks.â
Criticism and Public Perception
The dismissals of FAA employees come at a time when the administration is already facing a shortage of controllers. Federal officials have raised alarms over an understaffed and overworked air traffic control system for years, citing poor pay, long shifts, and intense training as reasons for the staff shortage. This, coupled with extensive media coverage of the various plane crashes globally, has exacerbated the public perception of airplanes â begging the question, is air travel safe?
The reality is fortunately more reassuring. In 2025, the National Transportation Safety Board reported 63 plane accidents in January and 37 in February. In comparison, 2024 experienced 80 and 93 accidents in January and February, respectively. In addition, according to the National Safety Council, Americans have a 1-in-93 chance of dying in a car crash, while deaths on airplanes are too rare to calculate the odds. Similarly, CNN concluded, âWhen you put it all together, airplane travel is among the safest ways to get around. The numbers, no matter how you crack them, show it has only become safer in recent years.â
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