US airlines’ 16-year safety record ended with tragedy. There were warnings ahead of the crash
CNN
US airlines had gone 16 years without a fatal crash until Wednesday night. But as impressive as that safety record had been, there have been warning signs in recent years of a significant risk of a collision like the one that just killed 67 people.
US airlines had gone 16 years without a fatal crash until Wednesday night. But as impressive as that safety record had been, there have been warning signs in recent years of a significant risk of a collision like the one that just killed 67 people. A regional jet from Wichita, Kansas, operated as an American Airlines flight by feeder carrier PSA Airlines, was preparing to land at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport when it collided with a US Army Blackhawk helicopter that was crossing its path just a few hundred feet above the ground. The cause of the crash was unknown Thursday as the investigation is just beginning. It was the first fatal crash of a commercial US airplane since 2009. As safe as air travel has become, the US air travel system has been under increasing stress in recent years — with a well-established shortage of the air traffic controllers throughout the nation, despite years of attempting to ramp up hiring. And congestion in many major metropolitan areas, especially around Washington DC, make flying riskier than 16 crash-free years might suggest. “I’m saddened, but I’m not surprised,” said Anthony Brickhouse, an aviation safety expert. “In the last two to three years, we’ve had so many close calls with commercial planes having near collisions in and near airport environments. If changes aren’t made, you eventually meet with tragedy.” Experts say that while America retains a gold standard for airline safety and that commercial air travel is the safest form of travel, there are stresses on the system that have been apparent in a series of near tragedies in recent years. A strained air traffic control system and congestion in the air space over many major cities has squeezed the margins of safety needed to operate the America’s air transportation system, Captain Dennis Tajer, an American Airlines pilot, told CNN early Thursday.
The DeepSeek drama may have been briefly eclipsed by, you know, everything in Washington (which, if you can believe it, got even crazier Wednesday). But rest assured that over in Silicon Valley, there has been nonstop, Olympic-level pearl-clutching over this Chinese upstart that managed to singlehandedly wipe out hundreds of billions of dollars in market cap in just a few hours and put America’s mighty tech titans on their heels.
At her first White House briefing, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt made an unusual claim about inflation that has stung American shoppers for years: Leavitt said egg prices have continued to surge because “the Biden administration and the department of agriculture directed the mass killing of more than 100 million chickens, which has led to a lack of chicken supply in this country, therefore lack of egg supply, which is leading to the shortage.”