Americans are having a nervous time in the sky since the start of 2025 after a string of airplane accidents claimed dozens of lives in the past two months and are surely to cause anxiety and alarm. Undoubtedly, they will heighten concerns about aviation safety and will likely increase pressure on regulators and lawmakers to enhance protective measures for air travel in the US.
The latest smashup was on Wednesday when two fixed-wing single-engine planes collided in midair and killing two persons at an Arizona airport, authorities reported.
A Cessna 172S and Lancair 360 MK II collided near the Marana Regional Airport, located about 21 miles northwest of Tucson, according to preliminary information from the National Transportation Safety Board. Each plane was carrying two passengers and the two who died were on the same aircraft, according to a spokesperson for the town of Marana. The other two people were uninjured.
This calamity follows the Delta Air Lines Flight 4819 incident on Monday. The flight from Minneapolis in Minnesota crashed, turned upside down and caught fire on the runway at Toronto Pearson International Airport in Ontario, Canada while attempting to land. All 80 people on board survived, but 21 people were taken to hospitals with injuries.
"We hit the ground, and we were sideways, and then we were upside down hanging like bats", passenger Pete Koukov told media.
On February 06, a small plane carrying 10 people crashed in Alaska after losing speed and altitude and vanishing from the radar. Bering Air Flight 445, a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan, heading from Unalakleet to the city of Nome, was recovered. No one survived, the Alaska Department of Public Safety confirmed.
On February 01, a plane struck an aircraft tug vehicle at Chicago O'Hare International Airport, sending the 64-year-old driver to hospital with multiple injuries, NPR reported.
On January 31, a medical transport jet crashed into a Philadelphia neighborhood, exploding in a fireball that engulfed several homes. The crash killed seven people, including all those aboard, and injured 19 others, according to AP.
And on January 29, a Bombardier CRJ700 , operating under American Airlines’ regional brand American Eagle, collided midair with a US Army helicopter near Washington, DC, killing all 67 people aboard the two aircraft. It was the country's deadliest aviation disaster since 2001, AP said.
Recent high-profile airline accidents have caused a spike in Americans questioning just how safe it is to fly, according to Google Trends data, Axios reported. [The only time more Americans were searching that question was during the pandemic, when there was confusion about how likely the virus was to spread on a plane].
Alan Diehl, a former investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board who has also served as a safety adviser for the FAA and US Air Force, highlighted a shortage of air traffic control personnel but also told Newsweek that the FAA should reemphasize "aeronautical decision-making".
An internal preliminary investigation revealed that during the January 29 collision between a passenger plane and a military helicopter, there was only one air traffic controller working both civilian and military flights in the notoriously busy airspace at the time of the collision, the Guardian reported.
Despite the series of deadly crashes, the Trump administration has begun firing hundreds of employees at the FAA, including some who maintain critical air traffic control infrastructure, the Guardian said.
Job cuts at the FAA are likely to raise concerns. The Professional Aviation Safety Specialists (Pass) union has struggled to recruit air traffic controllers in recent years. An increase in recruitment during the previous two administrations was hobbled by budget cuts that limited training and certification, per the report.
It cannot be denied that the above-mentioned aviation accidents in the US highlight significant human factors and systemic challenges in the industry. It would appear that almost everything seems to be crumbling on the US!
No comments:
Post a Comment