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Over the last few months, high profile air travel accidents and incidents across North America have captured public attention. They've also captured the attention of Bloomberg's Global Aviation editor, Benedict Cammell.
The big one was Reagan Airport in DC. That was the mid ad collision between a helicopter and the regional aircraft.
Breaking news out of Washington, DC, where a commercial airliner has collided with a helicopter in midair while on approach to Reagan National Airport.
Stands out for a number of reasons. You know, is in the capital, a couple of miles away from the White House, of very congested ass space. Tragically, a lot of lives lost. More than sixty people died in that.
A few weeks after that, a Delta flight that departed from the Minneapolis Saint Paul International Airport crashed in Toronto again.
A regional aircraft that crash landed, skidded along the runway and then practically catwheeled, losing one wing and landing bizarrely on its roof.
It's landing gear appearing to collapse, the right wing, striking the ground. Sparking flames, the plane flipping onto its back, a cloud of black smoke rising into the air.
Miraculously, nobody died in that incident. People managed to clamber out of the aircraft, out of the destroyed hull essentially, and an unwalked to safety. So two really scary and tragic but also very remarkable incidents.
And they've come at the end of one of the safest periods for air travel in US history. But it's not just those two crashes. There's been a string of other incidents. The cabin of a Delta flight filling with haze, a near miss between an airliner and a private jet on a runway in Chicago, an Asiana flight coming in too low in San Francisco. It all raises a question what is going on with American air travel?
One thing that has become almost a common feature of these accidents. They are almost always these days, there's footage of them. Whereas previously you might have read and heard about them days later, they're instantly in the social media loop. These days, everyone looks at them, everyone is really transfixed by what's going on, and that probably has contributed to a sense of unease.
I'm David Gerret, And this is the big take from Bloomberg News today on the show, what's behind the recent flurry of airline incidents and is their cause for concern? This recent spate of tragic and terrifying air safety incidents has made many travelers worried. I asked Bloomberg's Benedict Cammell to put them in context. It does seem like these last few weeks stand out that there have been more air safety incidents than usual? Am I right? In my read of that does feel that way.
That's certainly how people would see it. And judging by the question I'm being asked by friends by colleagues, is it still safe to fly? That certainly is a sense that's crept intoto the public perception.
Friends have been asking you about this. I've heard from friends who are more apprehensive, more nervous about flying. Did the day to bear out those anecdotal pieces of evidence? Do we send sense of broader trend in public opinion that people are more fearful of flying and light of what's been happening.
Yes, that's certainly the case, and it's something that really we started seeing, probably in a more pronounced way since the beginning of last year, if you remember, there was that eerie accident on the Boeing seven three seven from Alaska Airlines where that door plug blew out.
Investigators are increasingly focused on the four powerful bolts that should have kept the door panel from flying off this seven thirty seven Max nine.
That was really such a publicized and public event that a lot of people started asking what is going on? Can you imagine me sitting on that plane and suddenly sort of the door bursting out in mid flight? That I think really hit home for a lot of people.
And in the weeks after that, we had a of incidents, none of them fatal, none of them dramatic, but every time something happens, every time there was a near incursion on a runway, every time there was what we call a go around, ie a plane trying to land but then taking off again because something's wrong, a wheel falling off, something with the engine. Things that previously people really wouldn't have cared that much about that became far more pronounced.
United Airlines faces more questions this morning after a wheel fell off a Boying seven fifty.
Seven, but Monday's incident marks the second time a wheel has fallen off a United plane during takeoff. In the last four months.
Zach, we're having more and more of these incidents.
You don't want to hear breeze, so you almost enter a bit of a so should say, sort of echo chamber, whereby every additional incident gets added to the list and people get more and more worried. If you look at the data versus sort of the public sentiment out there, the two don't really move in tandem.
When it comes to aviation incidents. I imagine there's a spectrum and at one end you have meteor collision that we sign in Washington. On the other end, I guess perhaps some issues with taxiing something like that.
So the most common is what we call the tail strike, so it's basically the tail of the aircraft striking the runway. We have runway excursions, which means the plane basically rolling over the runway into a grass field field or something like that. And they're usually not tragic. I mean, they happen, they damage a plane more often than not. Planes might
touch each other on the tarmac. They try and come out of their parking position and they smack into another aircraft or that, you know, a truck catering truck or whatever might smash into an aircraft. These things happen more often that you think, but they don't get publicized that much. Yeah, people don't really read about them because it's sort of part of the course. It's something that just happens, and
you know, people move on. It's only when it's dramatic, when it's tragic, when there are fatalities involved, that's really when people take note. They were about nine serious run way incursion, so sort of two aircraft coming close to one another in twenty twenty four. There were twenty four in twenty twenty fIF so that gives you a sense. This is data for the US that gives you a
sense of just how rare this is. So nine over the course of year is really not very many if you again think about the number of movements that we have.
I was struck reading about that mid air collision between the American Airlines flight and the military helicopter in Washington that we hadn't had a fatal air crash in the US since two thousand and nine. What accounts for that rather long period fifteen plus years of safety.
Well, it's a number of things. Pilot training has become very good. The aircraft generally have become extremely reliable. Kit Whenever we do have accidents these days, most of the time this is not because of faulty equipment. Most of the time there's some kind of pilot or navigation error involved, So that has definitely improved. The other thing is we, you know, point out the obvious. We live in a fairly safe part of the world, don't live in a
conflict zone. And also when something does go wrong, there's an extremely diligent process in place to make sure, you know, that everyone understands what caused this, what can be learned from it, and how to prevent this from happening again.
Coming up, how air travel safety in the US compares to the rest of the world. The challenge is ahead for American aviation and what this means for flyers right now, I asked Bloomberg's Benedict Cambell how the US airspace system compares to other parts of the world.
I mean, it is incredibly congested, but it's controlled, you know, so, but there are obviously parts of the system that at times look to be overwhelmed, and it's in some ways also slightly messy, you know, as we saw with the helicopter and aircraft collision, you sort of had two different species of aircraft in the same airspace, and in areas like DC or in other parts of the world where you have these sort of different forms of air transport colliding as it were, or sort of moving in tandem,
that can be difficult to navigate. And they did actually make some changes after that collision to say, okay, we want helicopters to be out of certain zones, we want to suspend helicopter movements, and so on, so that they instantly look at these things and think about, okay, what
can we do differently. Private jets another should we say, species of aircraft that have really grown in the number of usage over the last couple of years really since COVID and suffice it to say private jets and commercial jets. They might not always move sort of in the same kind of way. The person navigating the private jet might have a different sort of training background. So there are these specificities in the industry, and that's not even talking
about drones and maybe the future of electric flying. So the complexity of the airspace has become such that navigating through these different types of aircraft in the sky is already complicated and will probably become more complicated still.
We've heard in recent weeks about the technology underpinning air safety air traffic control here in the US, and a lot about the insuffient amount of air traffic controllers in the US. How unique are those problems? When you look at at air travel around the.
World, it is fair to say that in most countries air traffic control systems have sort of evolved and grown over the years and might not always be state of the art. They might look a little creaky in some ways. You know, the computer systems might not be up to scratch. They are slow moving, they don't update that quickly. But by and larger they work. You know, it's a system that's also built on redundancy, that is built on let's make sure it works. It might not be state of
the art, but it's safe. You know, if it's not broken, don't fix it. That's sort of the attitude. So there are obviously attempts to upgrade these. There's a lot of money. There are new players coming in. We've heard from Elon Musk, you know, Donald Trump himself said we have an old, broken system. We have the new transport Secretary Sean Duffy's saying we need to rethink the national airspace and he said that he's going to plug Doge, you know, Elon
Musk's group into the system. So there are attempts out there, some of them probably more audacious than others to upgrade the system. But what you see is, you know, this isn't just a quick software update. You want to make sure it works and it works reliably. You have to
be absolutely sure. You need the redundancy in the system and having something that might be maybe not quite state of the art, but reliable sometimes it is better than saying, okay, let's try out something new and you know, let's hope for the best. So there is an attempt to upgrade the system, but how much time are you willing to sacrifice for that? Who's in charge of this? Those are some of the questions that are being asked right now.
When it comes to prusonnel to those zero traffic controllers and unders stand and many of them are working ten hour days, six day weeks. How sustainable is then? Why has it been so difficult to hire a sufficient amount of air traffic controllers in the US.
This has been an issue for many years, but it became more pronounced during the pandemic when a lot of people left the industry and left the FAA, the body that oversees aviation in the US, the regulator, and we have had a drain of air traffic controllers. They've retired
very often and not been replaced in sufficient numbers. There was an attempt under the Biden administration to really go out to universities, go out to colleges, try and recruit more people, but we're still far short of where they should be. It's not seen as a particularly attractive line of work. I don't know what the pay is, but I imagine it's not astronomical. So there are people out there who think, well, why should I go into this field?
And really attracting the talent has been difficult now. After the crash in DC, there was a lot of debate over have we hired the right people? Have maybe diversity efforts gone too far and attracted the wrong types of people. That was a line that was put forward by Donald Trump and Sean Duffy to some degree, others will say this is absolutely not the cause of any crash. You know, the people that do operate in these towers are highly professional.
There is no shortage. When there are fewer people on staff, it's because, you know, it's a slow day of traffic. It's not because we lack the people. But the truth is there aren't still enough people out there. They could do with more. But what we're seeing right now is, you know, the government going in and actually weeding out positions and removing people, not mission critical and safety critical people, they say. But over you know, this department and others,
there are people losing their jobs. And obviously that's not great for morale. If you are thinking about going into that industry, you might think twice going forward.
New Benedict, I wanted to get your perspective on this because you and I are talking just a few days after report that Federal Aviation Administration workers were let go. And as you say, the government has been adamant that they aren't safety critical, but we've seen unions push back
on that. How should we look at what's happened here in the context of recent events and the context of kind of the long standing difficulties that the US has faced hiring adequate staff to deal with aviation safety.
Well, it certainly doesn't help, you know, if you want to attract people, you need to provide certain sort of measures that will seem attractive to them. It has to be pay, it has to be working hours, but also has to be job security. And these are people who were let go within their first year of you know,
their probation. So for future generations, or people thinking about a job in somewhere like air traffic control or somewhere else in the within the FAA, be it an engineer, be it in certification, there are other fields within the FAA.
They might think twice going forward because they might think, well, if I'm just going to be targeted within my first year because somebody, you know, elon ask if somebody else thinks that I'm not performing properly, then i might as well go to Amazon, or I'll go to Boeing, or I'll go to you know, somewhere else where I feel as a greater sense of job security. And after years of trying to really increase the hiring, this is probably seen as fairly counterproductive.
You said you've been fielding questions from friends or maybe they've been coming to you a bit nervous about flying. What do you say to them, maybe to try to ease their nervous a bit.
I say flying is safe. There's very little you can do about it one way or the other short of not getting on a plane. But think of the three million travelers in the US alone who get on a plane every day, take off and land safely. Think of the forty five thousand planes that do this. Think of the forty million aircraft that fly across the world every year, and only very very few do not get to their destination. The chances of perishing or even getting hurt on a
plane are absolutely minuscule. Now, of every person that dies or gets injured on the plane, is one too many. But overall, I know I'm sounding like an industry lobbyist at this point. Yeah, But overall is still a very, very safe mode of transport.
This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gerat. This episode is produced by David Fox. It was edited by Ryan Bean and Naomi Shaven, who's also our senior producer. It was fact checked by Adrian A. Tapia and mixed and sound designed by Alex Sagura. Our senior editor is Elizabeth Poncell. Our executive producer is Nicole Beemster. Boor. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. If you liked this episode, make sure to subscribe and review The Big Take wherever
you listen to podcasts. It helps people find the show. Thanks for listening. We'll be back on Monday.