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, seemingly back-to-back, 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.
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 occurrence, but these errors are usually trapped and a larger accident is prevented,” he said.
Here’s what the numbers indicate regarding U.S. aviation safety trends for the past 10 years.
Of the 63 accidents in January, 10 were fatal, and among the 37 in February, four were fatal.
Two of the fatal crashes were the medical transport jet that crashed into a Philadelphia neighborhood on Jan. 31 and the plane that went down on its way to Nome, Alaska.
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.
How Many Major US Plane Crashes in 2025?
The five major deadly U.S. aviation accidents so far this year all occurred within four weeks in Washington, Philadelphia, Alaska, and Arizona.The Jan. 29 crash in Washington that killed all 67 people on board both a commercial American Airlines jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter was the only fatal commercial aviation crash in the past 15 years.
The Jan. 31 crash in Philadelphia involving a small medical jet carrying a child patient killed all six on board the plane and another in a car on the ground.
Then, on Feb. 6, a small Cessna 208B Grand Caravan disappeared from radar before crashing into the ice on the Bering Sea, killing all 10 on board.
Another major incident occurred on Feb. 10 when two private jets collided at Scottsdale Airport in Arizona, injuring four people and killing one.
Is it Still Safe to Fly in the US?
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.
“Transportation incidents for all modes claimed 44,546 lives in 2022, of which all but 2,032 involved highway motor vehicles. Preliminary estimates for 2023 suggest a further decline in fatalities,” the report stated.
“There were no deaths from crashes on large commercial airlines in 2023, but several hundred deaths occurred in crashes in general aviation, commuter air, and air taxi services.”
It’s important to distinguish between these categories when examining accident rates over the past 10 years, Browne said.
Many of the crash statistics in the NTSB’s data are from general aviation accidents, which still make up the vast majority of all aviation incidents, as they include private flights.
General aviation accident rates are much higher because of part-time pilots, including those who fly only once a month, John Goglia, an aviation safety expert and a former board member from the NTSB, told The Epoch Times.
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.
Although it might seem as if there are more aviation incidents following January’s midair collision over Washington, this is largely driven by both media attention and a surge of interest among the public on social media, Browne said.
Since the 1990s, the U.S. government has been making a concerted effort to decrease the accident rate for commercial aviation, Goglia said.
“We have just focused on driving down the known causes of previous accidents. And it has borne a tremendous amount of fruit,” he said.
The government improved aviation safety by increasing focus on the human failures that lead to accidents and ramping up training “where it was deemed to be necessary,” Goglia said.
Could Heightened Attention Lead to Increased Safety?
Although recent attention on aviation incidents has made air travel seem less safe than it really is, Browne said the spotlight could lead to increased safety for the industry.“We are raising awareness, and in so raising awareness, people are being a little more mindful when they’re going out there flying, and it’s overall helping to reduce the accident rate,” he said.
“We’re all going to learn from this and prevent these from happening in the future.”
In the case of the midair collision over Washington, Browne said many pilots were not aware of how close the helicopter routes “came to landing jets and how that was managed.”
Yet because of the catastrophe, the Federal Aviation Administration isn’t waiting until the final NTSB report comes out to change the management of those routes around the nation’s capital, he said.
“They see that this is obviously a bad system, and they’re changing the system immediately,” Browne said.
Goglia also emphasized that the collision “wasn’t the fault of the commercial airline operation,” as the plane was exactly where it was supposed to be, whereas the helicopter appears to have been flying above its allowed altitude for that airspace.
“Why was the helicopter flying higher than it should, higher than it was authorized, higher than it was trained to fly?” Goglia said. “So the entire accident was caused by that military pilot, with a little bit of help from air traffic control.”
