Should I get on an airplane?

Vox

27-02-2025

Since Christmas Day, four commercial jets have crashed, killing nearly 300 people and injuring many others. Harrowing images — of the explosion over the Potomac after a Black Hawk helicopter collided with a plane, and of a Delta flight upside-down on the runway in Toronto — have people spooked about their next trip. The US National Transportation Safety Board's report of over a hundred accidents so far in 2025 is not helping.
But despite it all, experts maintain that yes, it is still safe to fly.
Statistically, it's safer to fly now than at any point since the 1960s thanks to advances in aircraft manufacturing, more sophisticated weather imaging, and tighter safety regulations. You could fly twice a day for roughly 2,500 years before you run even a small risk of getting into a fatal aviation accident.
Though driving provides the illusion of control, taking a road trip is much more dangerous than flying. 'Your chance of getting into a fatal car crash at some point in your life is a little bit less than 1 in 100. It's about a 1 percent chance,' said Darryl Campbell, aviation reporter for The Verge.
Campbell told Sean Rameswaram on Today, Explained that the number of high-profile aviation accidents right now, combined with depictions of plane crashes on TV and in movies, make the situation seem worse than the data proves.
'When you're in the back of an airplane, you're not in charge,' Campell said. 'You're in the middle of this complex system that maybe you don't understand. You've seen all of these horrible things that make you fear the worst whenever you feel the slightest bump.' That doesn't mean the worst is likely to happen.
But that's not to say the system is flawless.
John Cox has been flying planes for 55 years and now serves as an aviation safety consultant. Cox joined Sean Rameswaram on Today, Explained to talk about how recent firings at the Federal Aviation Administration might impact aviation safety.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There's much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Just as Americans are feeling nervous about getting on a plane, DOGE has gone and eliminated something like 400 jobs from this agency. Can you help us understand some of the jobs that got the axe?
They reduced the number of maintainers of radio and radar equipment. Our system is an older system, and it requires a good bit of maintenance. So, the biggest concern in the near term is that we're going to have radios or things that fail, and that will limit the air traffic controller in being able to accept more flights. The problems are going to show up. It may not be today or tomorrow, but the maintenance staff for our older radar and radio facilities throughout the country are going to be impacted.
Our Transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, has said that none of these jobs eliminated at FAA were terribly critical to safety. And it sounds like you're agreeing with him.
Well, there is a definition for safety-critical jobs. Pilots, flight attendants, aircraft maintenance technicians, flight dispatchers — those are all designated as safety-critical jobs, and none of those were reduced. Air traffic controller is a safety-critical job. None of those were reduced.
It's true that the maintenance of the equipment that air traffic control uses — that was not considered to be a safety-critical position. And if you take it to the extreme, the capacity cutbacks could mean fewer flights that people have choices from and potentially even higher pricing, but the reliability factor is more on the capacity side than the safety side.
We have been hearing for years that air traffic control towers have struggled with staffing, that we're around 2,000 air traffic controllers short, according to the FAA. Why is that?
I think recruiting and getting the right candidates has been a real challenge because about 50 percent of the candidates don't make it through training. Being an air traffic controller is a very intense, highly trained position. And to get through the training process and to become a full performance-level controller takes years.
Most air traffic controllers right now, or many of them, are working six days a week, and if they put in for vacation time, they may or may not get it. And this doesn't happen once, it happens frequently. So getting the highest-qualified people, when you have that sort of work-life balance issue, becomes more difficult and part of it has been funding.
The issue with FAA funding goes back many decades. If we could take the political considerations out of it and provide a steady funding source saying that this is a critical function, many of the FAA's problems would go away slowly. We would be able to get and recruit air traffic controllers. We can update the equipment. All of this is going to take time. The root of this is steady congressional funding for the FAA. See More: Podcasts
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