Flights have been on everyone’s minds, with spring break in the rear view mirror and everyone returning from vacation.
A little less than three months into the new year, there already were three major crashes with domestic planes in the U.S. alone. All three crashes had fatalities for people on board and one also killed a person on the ground.
Despite the most fatal of these crashes being on Jan 29, only days after did President Donald Trump fired several hundred Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees.
Trump neglected the importance of an FAA Administrator before the first of these crashes, which was also the most fatal. A total of 67 people died, leaving no survivors in the incident. In this crash, a military helicopter going out for a training mission got too close to Reagan National Airport and collided with an oncoming Delta flight. The crash was most likely due to miscommunication with air traffic control where directions from the tower overlapped with the helicopter pilots’ transmission. This possibly led to them not being able to hear the instructions from the tower, letting the planes collide, according to ABC.
Only a few hours after the Jan. 29 crash, Trump appointed the FAA Administrator, Christopher Rochelau, who has had more than 20 years of experience in the FAA.
Trump also claimed that the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) hires under Joe Biden and Barack Obama’s presidencies (which is where you hire people of different backgrounds to get a more diverse workforce) were one of the major reasons why the first plane crash happened. “[The plane crash] just could’ve been [due to DEI],” said Trump in the following news conference after the crash.
FAA employees help to mitigate the risk of more of these crashes happening. They specifically work with commercial and civil aviation, including military flights. They also work with air traffic control to decrease any risks in overlapping flights in airspace. Much of what the FAA does is mitigate crashes.
Just two days after that, on Jan. 31, there was another crash, where once again there were no survivors, and one person was killed on the ground. This plane crashed into a mall in Philadelphia, causing a shower of shrapnel to rain down, killing one person and injuring 19 others in the process, according to the New York Times.
The third major plane crash to date in the U.S. was on Feb. 6 in Anchorage, Alaska, again with no survivors. In this event, the plane crashed into the snow due to unknown causes. There were a total of 10 deaths. According to CNN, the data from the control towers overseeing this flight is crucial to uncover why this plane crashed.
Trump possibly in conjunction with Elon Musk, a part of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) would end up firing many people from the FAA after seeing these plane crashes in an attempt to cut costs for the U.S. So far, more than 400 FAA employees were fired without warning through an email out of the blue. However, “Zero air traffic controllers and critical safety personnel were let go,” said Sean Duffy, the Secretary of Transportation.
In addition, Feb. 25, there was a close call where a Southwest Airlines flight tried to land and nearly ran into a private jet driving out into the area the Southwest flight was trying to land in. Which would make the flight lurch back up into the air having to take a loop around the airport to land with a clear runway.
These flights crashing could be a worrisome foreshadowing of our future, possibly the most fatal because of Trump’s negligence of hiring a FAA Administrator in a timely fashion. Trump also blamed the crash on Jan. 29 on D.E.I. hires from Obama and Biden’s presidency only for two more deadly crashes to follow in the next week and a close call soon after.
Despite all of this, Tim McClung, aviation director for the Iowa Department of Transportation, said, “Fliers should have trust in the system,” trying to reassure the nervous few who may have wavering thoughts after these crashes.
