Friday, October 3, 2025

Federal data shows no increase in plane accidents this year

Must read

Are there more plane accidents happening this year? That’s not what federal data shows.

A midair collision between a passenger jet and a helicopter over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. A medevac jet that hurtled toward the ground and exploded in Philadelphia. A commercial flight that flipped upside down while landing in Toronto.

In recent weeks, videos of planes crashing and burning have populated social media and news feeds. For many people, the disasters’ frequency seemed out of the ordinary. “(Seven) plane crashes since the Trump administration congratulated itself for ‘restoring aviation safety,’” liberal podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen wrote on Feb. 16 on Threads.

The post listed specific aviation events from Jan. 29 through Feb. 15, and not all were fatal or passenger flight crashes, a sign of people’s increasing awareness of smaller aircraft accidents and other non-crash accidents. Social media users and politicians also called out President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders on federal hiring and aviation safety after these aviation accidents.

“A 400% increase in plane crashes is absolutely something to be alarmed about, has nothing to do with ‘DEI’ hires and is absolutely connected to the mass illegal firings happening,” a Feb. 17 Threads post said.

But these claims are misleading. Although plane crash news is alarming, data shows that commercial passenger flight accidents are rare, and the overall number of recent aviation accidents is not out of the ordinary. Commercial flying is statistically very safe.

In the past decade, the National Transportation Safety Board has recorded more than 1,100 aviation accidents and incidents each year. They rarely involve commercial aircraft. That accident/incident figure is small compared with the more than 45,000 flights the Federal Aviation Administration’s Air Traffic Organization handles every day.

Jeff Guzzetti, aviation safety consultant and former NTSB air safety investigator, told PolitiFact the public is increasingly aware of plane crashes because of “recent commercial air carrier accidents which have killed or injured paying passengers.”

“Commercial aviation accidents like this are extremely rare, so when they happen, they get lots of attention,” Guzzetti said.

Has Trump seen more accidents during his first month in office than other presidents?

No, federal data shows Trump’s numbers are not an anomaly compared with other presidents.

The NTSB’s Case Analysis and Reporting Online recorded 48 U.S. aviation accidents from Jan. 20, when Trump was inaugurated, to Feb. 20. That number did not include three accidents that Cohen noted in his post: the Delta crash in Toronto; the Feb. 12 San Diego Bay crash; or the Feb. 16 Georgia crash. It can take around two weeks after an accident for a preliminary report to appear in the database.

Five of the 48 accidents were fatal:

• Sixty-seven people died in the Jan. 29 Washington, D.C., crash.
• On Jan. 25, an airplane crashed near Charlottesville, Virginia, killing the pilot.
• On Jan. 31, a medevac jet crashed in Philadelphia, killing six people onboard and one person on the ground.
• On Feb. 6, a regional airline flight crashed in Nome, Alaska, killing 10 people.
• On Feb. 14, a plane crashed in Pierson, Florida, killing the pilot.

The NTSB is still investigating these accidents.

Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., wrote in a Feb. 17 X post, “No president has had more planes crash in their first month in office than Donald Trump.”

The NTSB doesn’t classify aviation accidents in terms of “crashes,” but its data shows that former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden each had more aviation accidents in their first month in office than Trump did in the first month of his second term.

How frequently do aviation accidents occur?

The NTSB investigates and classifies events involving aircraft and passengers as “accidents” and “incidents,” and the data shows both are fairly frequent. Not all involve dramatic scenes of fire or planes falling from the sky, but most prompt investigation.

The Code of Federal Regulations defines an aircraft “accident” as occurring between the time any person boards the aircraft and disembarks, and “in which any person suffers death or serious injury, or in which the aircraft receives substantial damage.”

An “incident” is “associated with the operation of an aircraft, which affects or could affect the safety of operations.” For example, a civilian drone collided with a Canadian firefighting plane Jan. 9 in Los Angeles, damaging and grounding the plane. No one was injured; the NTSB classified it as an incident.

The Code of Federal Regulations governs operations under air carriers (large commercial aircraft, including cargo and passenger planes), commuter and on-demand carriers (aircraft with fewer than 10 passenger seats) and general aviation (aircraft including turboprops and miscellaneous jets).

In the past decade, more than 1,100 civil aviation accidents — accidents involving nonmilitary flights using U.S.-registered aircraft — have occurred every year, with over 300 fatalities recorded annually. Air carrier accidents, which include commercial passenger flights as well as commercial cargo flights, averaged 27 per year from 2012 to 2022. Of 300 accidents during that period, six were fatal.

In a 2024 report, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics said that between 2013 and 2022, U.S. passenger airlines recorded 12 fatalities.

Conclusion:

While it is true that there have been several high-profile aviation accidents in recent weeks, the data shows that commercial passenger flight accidents are extremely rare, and the overall number of recent aviation accidents is not out of the ordinary. Commercial flying is statistically very safe.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Q: Are there more plane accidents happening this year?
A: No, federal data shows that the number of recent aviation accidents is not out of the ordinary.

Q: Has Trump seen more accidents during his first month in office than other presidents?
A: No, federal data shows Trump’s numbers are not an anomaly compared with other presidents.

Q: Are aviation accidents becoming more common?
A: No, the data shows that the number of fatal general aviation accidents has been relatively flat in the past few years, and actually the rate of fatal accidents has been declining slightly.

Q: Are commercial passenger flight accidents becoming more frequent?
A: No, the data shows that commercial passenger flight accidents are extremely rare and the overall number of recent aviation accidents is not out of the ordinary.

- Advertisement -spot_img

More articles

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

- Advertisement -spot_img

Latest article