Inside the aviation industry’s rough start to 2024

Good morning. It's Wednesday, January 10th. I'm Mark Garrison, in for Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." On today's show, air travel deals with multiple high-profile emergencies, House Republicans go after Biden's Homeland Security Secretary over immigration, and a new study reveals what's hiding inside bottled water.

Let's start with aviation, where 2024 is getting off to a rough start. Last week, five people on a Coast Guard plane were killed when it collided with a Japan Airlines plane on the runway in Tokyo, starting a massive fire. All the passengers and crew of the Japan Airlines plane survived. And then there was the Alaska Airlines flight, where a large panel fell off the side of a Boeing 737 Max 9 shortly after take-off. It left a gaping hole that forced an emergency landing.

I will say I've had a few people tell me that they've kept their seatbelts on for their entire flights over the last couple of days when they have been flying, which maybe they wouldn't have normally done before.

Investigators are looking into these incidents, but Katz says it'll be a while, likely many months, before we have firmer answers about what happened.

It's an incredibly meticulous process of investigating any kind of accident. But the early indications are showing that at some stage in this process that… led to both incidents, that some kind of human error was involved.

Katz points out that the aviation industry is still in the process of getting back to normal after largely shutting down during the worst of the pandemic.

What we saw during the pandemic was airlines parking thousands of jets. We saw airports come to near standstills. Millions of people had to be retrenched. And that was across the board from pilots to cabin crew, but also to maintenance staff and factory workers for Boeing and Airbus. Coming out of the pandemic o ver the last two years or so, we've seen that almost in the exact reverse.

Manufacturers like Boeing and Airbus have spent the last couple of years ramping up production after making major cuts. And Katz spoke to flight safety experts who say the industry has faced challenges in rebuilding its workforce. Now, that might not leave passengers feeling super confident about boarding their next flight. But Katz says it's important to remember, accident rates are below pre-pandemic levels.

Aviation is held to an incredibly high standard when it comes to safety. And the industry is obsessed. And I think that's why, when we see incidents or accidents like these, that the industry kind of wakes up and it jolts alive and flyers kind of take notice, you know, because it is a scary thing. And in aviation, the damage from mistakes and in accidents are severe.

Now, let's take a quick look at some other stories in the news. At least four people are dead as severe weather rips across the U.S.

There were multiple tornadoes reported in the Southeast, dangerous flooding is threatening east coast cities, and strong winds are tearing down power lines, leading to hundreds of thousands of outages in multiple states. At the White House, there's a major review underway of how cabinet members delegate authority when sick or traveling. This comes after President Biden and other top officials were kept in the dark for days about the hospitalization of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Police later arrested the attackers. The station says two employees were injured, including a camera operator who was shot in the leg. And in the Middle East today, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with the head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmud Abbas. The U.S. has talked about the possibility of his group governing Gaza in the future. Yesterday, Blinken met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israel must stop taking steps that undercut Palestinians' ability to govern themselves effectively: extremist settler violence carried out with impunity, settlement expansion, demolitions, evictions, all make it harder, not easier, for Israel to achieve lasting peace and security.

Netanyahu has shown no interest in reviving negotiations toward a Palestinian state. Blinken also said that the U.S. is continuing to support Israel.

Today in Washington, House Republicans are holding a hearing about potentially impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

No cabinet secretary has been impeached in nearly 150 years. Republicans argue that the administration's immigration policies have made the southern border vulnerable. We talked to "Washington Post" Homeland Security reporter Nick Miroff, who covers immigration enforcement and Homeland Security.

This case that they're building, you know, while it does have some elements of… alleged wrongdoing, has largely been political.

Several Republicans have doubts about the impeachment case, and the party holds a slim majority in the House. And even if it did vote to impeach, there's little chance the Senate will vote to convict. Miroff says targeting Mayorkas seems to be more about creating a rallying point for Republicans with hardline views on immigration policy.

I think it's a way for them to channel their anger about… border and immigration issues. It's a way for them to unite around a specific campaign. But if we look at the real prospects for them actually removing him from office, they seem pretty low.

Beyond the politics, there are challenges related to immigration. Miroff reported on new government data showing that the U.S. removed more than 4 million people crossing the border since 2021, but it also released more than 2.3 million migrants into the U.S. As Miroff explained it, that shows the extent to which border security has been overwhelmed. Mass releases are typically a last resort when agents don't have capacity to process migrants.

What's interesting right now is there are sort of these two parallel processes going on right now. There's this bipartisan group of senators that are trying to negotiate immigration and border policy changes in conjunction with this, you know, supplemental funding for the war in Ukraine and for Israel. And the Republican Senate has been pretty focused on that.

Mayorkas has defended his record and called on Congress to provide more funding for border security. And the Homeland Security Department says House Republicans are wasting valuable time by pursuing impeachment.

Finally, new research shows that there are a lot more tiny bits of plastic floating in bottled drinking water than scientists thought.

The new study used lasers to scan for nanoplastics. They're hard to detect because they're smaller than one-seventieth of a human hair. The technology found hundreds of thousands of particles in the average liter of bottled water, using samples of several popular brands. The data gives us new insight into a widespread problem. Lately, scientists have found trace amounts of plastics practically everywhere, in our food and water, in the ocean, in soil, even in the air we breathe.

We know for certain that microplastics are being found in placentas and that mothers are passing these particles to their children in utero. Children are tainted with microplastics before they're born. And we are in desperate need of more studies as to what the consequences could be.

Simon also talks about ways to mitigate our exposure to plastic and protect our health. That's playing for you next, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.