U.S. travelers are on edge after a spate of recent airline incidents, including one deadly midair collision that killed 67 people and another in which a commercial jet flipped upside down after landing.
Since the start of the year, multiple aviation accidents have occurred, with many wondering whether they are signs of a broader trend for aviation safety or the result of increased focus on air travel following the catastrophic midair collision near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, on Jan. 29.
Just two days later, a medical transport jet crashed into a Philadelphia neighborhood, killing seven people and leaving more than a dozen injured. Then a small Cessna plane en route to Nome, Alaska, slammed into the ice on the Bering Sea, killing all 10 on board.
Even with these events, the number of aviation accidents every year has remained steady over the past decade, according to data from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), with the past two months seeing fewer fatal and non-fatal incidents than the same time frame in both 2023 and 2024.
Aviation experts told The Epoch Times that commercial aviation remains the safest form of transportation, and the deadliest plane crash in more than 20 years drew extra media attention.
Accident rates in both commercial aviation and Part 135—which includes private charters and air taxi flights—continue to decline, Juan Browne, a pilot for one of the major U.S. commercial airlines, told The Epoch Times.
“Every time something happens, it’s highlighted in the media, and oftentimes these other incidents, they’re fairly regular occurrences, but these errors are usually trapped and a larger accident is prevented,” he said.
There have been 100 aviation accidents since the start of the year, including 14 fatal and 86 non-fatal, according to data from the NTSB.
Of the 63 accidents in January, 10 were fatal, and among the 37 in February, four were fatal.
January and February 2025 have seen fewer aviation incidents than in the same time frame in all previous years over the past decade, according to the NTSB.
This year has seen 100 aviation accidents in total, and through the same time frame, all previous years since 2014 range between 145 in 2019 at the low end and 185 in 2020 at the high end.
This year’s 14 count for fatal accidents is also the lowest for the past decade, with 2023 seeing 28 fatal accidents in January and February and 2018 seeing 50, the highest point in the past 10 years.
The five major deadly U.S. aviation accidents so far this year all occurred within four weeks in Washington, Philadelphia, Alaska, and Arizona.
Despite the increased attention on aviation accidents following last month’s deadly midair collision over Washington, flying on commercial airlines still remains the safest form of transportation, according to a 2024 Transportation Statistics Report from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
Travelers have a much higher risk of dying in a car accident on the way to the airport than on an airplane, with widely reported estimates suggesting that the average American has a roughly one in 11 million chance of dying in a plane crash.
By contrast, an average American has a one in 95 chance of dying in a car accident, according to a report from the National Safety Council.
Since the 1990s, the U.S. government has been making a concerted effort to decrease the accident rate for commercial aviation, John Goglia, an aviation safety expert and a former board member from the NTSB, told The Epoch Times.
“We have just focused on driving down the known causes of previous accidents. And it has borne a tremendous amount of fruit,” he said.
—Jacob Burg
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