Provided by Library of Congress

One of the first aircraft incidents of the year occurred in Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, marking the first deadly crash in 15 years. Since then, there have been 141 plane crashes that mainly include private rather than public flights.

Increased news media coverage of five recent plane malfunctions throughout North America has caused worry nationwide regarding plane travel. 

A crash, involving an American Airlines Bombardier and an army helicopter, marked the first deadly commercial plane crash in 15 years and killed 67 people in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 29. Other incidents since then include the medical jet crash in Philadelphia and the Delta plane crash in Toronto, Canada. There have been a total of 142 plane crashes this year as of March. 

Frosh Lucas Wu reads the news daily and believes that airport management contributes to the increased plane malfunction. 

“A lot of media outlets provide live coverage of the crash, and flight-tracking sites track the plane’s altitude and speed,” Lucas said. “They’re open to the general public, which allows them to find their own interpretation of why the crash happened. Airports in the US are understaffed, so air traffic controls don’t have enough rest, so there’s a greater chance to make errors.”

An anonymous pilot noted the multi-layered process behind the scenes, emphasizing the constant conversations happening between workers inside the flying industry, with a focus on prioritizing safety amongst passengers. 

“In the days of increased social media and less human connectivity, we have forgotten that a lot of fields are real people doing complex things,” the pilot said. “This is a competency-based technical skill—we fly a plane close to the speed of sound and land on tiny pieces of pavement. The media is very sad to portray operators—pilots, flight attendants and ground handlers—in a very negative light. Of course, it gets clicks and eyeballs on it, so people really buy into this rhetoric of negativity.”

The pilot sees airport workers being treated differently by passengers due to increased public unease. 

“These incidents have affected my younger colleagues mentally,” the pilot said. “A lot of times we’ll see these younger pilots who are working their way up to fly big airplanes and hopefully be captain one day in their own right, and people will be very negative and sometimes outright hostile to them.”

Since the start of the year, the Trump Administration fired about 400 employees of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Feb. 14 as part of the administration’s efforts to cut the federal workforce. 

Student pilot Lucho Caballero (11) noted the potential risks of having a short-staffed FAA.

“The FAA is really important because it’s all about safety and redundancy,” Lucho said. “Having many people is a source of redundancy, which is good because it provides safety checks; and human error has been a big factor in these recent crashes.”

Despite the prevalence of plane crashes in the news, the majority of accidents have occurred on small private flights, not public mass transportation, and the proportion of accidents that are fatal remains low compared to past years.

“In the end, flying is still the safest method of mass transportation,” Lucho said. “The reason we see all these disasters happen is because they’re so rare that when one happens, it’s immediately documented. Overall, the amount of accidents has actually been decreasing over the past several years.”