BALTIMORE, Md. — The plane crash in D.C. last month was the deadliest aviation accident in almost 25 years. After witnessing that horror, it's only natural to pay closer attention to what's happening in the sky. And the last few weeks have given us no shortage of things to worry about, with another commercial plane crash in Toronto this week, and small plane crashes in Philadelphia, Alaska, and two in Arizona. There were also incidents in Chicago - a passenger plane hit a tug as it was crossing a taxiway- and in Houston - an engine problem caused a plane's wing to catch fire.
"If we spread these mishaps out, they’re little blips. If you squeeze them together, everybody’s gonna freak the hell out," Matthew 'Whiz' Buckley, a former Navy fighter pilot and former commercial pilot, told WMAR-2 News.
Whether you’re a frequent flier or an anxious one, all the recent plane crashes might have you wondering - what’s going on up there? Experts we talked to say - hang up the tinfoil hat and hop on that flight, worry-free.
"It’s more dangerous getting in your car and driving to the airport, or driving home. Statistically, it is," Buckley said.
"You definitely don’t have anything to worry about. The airlines themselves are held to a pretty high standard when it comes to maintaining the aircraft. That’s what’s helped us have this incredible record for 25 years, and for that matter, the incident in DCA had nothing to do with the aircraft maintenance," Bobby Laurie, D.C.-based travel expert and former flight attendant, said.
"At times, it seems surreal when you have so many incidents one after the other, but you have to look at also - is there any commonality across them? And the answer's no," aviation security expert Dr. Sheldon Jacobson said.
That's the key, these experts tell WMAR-2 News. Although these crashes happened seemingly one after the other these last few weeks, it should only raise alarm bells for fliers if there's a pattern to what caused them.
"There's no common theme between any of these at all," Buckley said.
"It's not like the 737 Max issues that we had earlier in like 2020 where you know it was a 737 Max problem," Laurie told WMAR-2 News.
Dr. Jacobson said, "The circumstances around them were so different that there's nothing I can see in the data that suggests we have a problem with the air system right now."
In Focus look at aviation accidents since 2020
There's also a big difference between the extreme safety of flying commercial and the relatively riskier business of flying smaller jets like the ones that crashed in Philadelphia, Alaska, and Arizona recently. In 2023 for example, there were zero deaths from commercial plane crashes, while there were more than 300 from general aviation.
"They don't have the checks and balances that you see in commercial airplanes," Dr. Jacobson said, referring to smaller planes. "What we're seeing at Toronto, what we're seeing at Washington Reagan, are outliers."
People were quick to make it political, blaming the Trump administration for its recent layoffs in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
"It's so stupid. And immediately when they were jumping on that yesterday, I was like, it crashed in Canada. And it had nothing to do with air traffic controllers," Buckley said.
"It's too quickly after the gutting that seems to be happening right now; it's just too fast," Dr. Jacobson said, referring to the recent incidents and crashes. "We have to look over a 3-6 month period, a one year period just to see what's happening, and that will give us some information."
"What we’re discussing now is really about the future," Laurie said of the FAA layoff concerns. "None of that has to do with what happened in these most recent two incidents with commercial planes."
But his concerns for the future remain: "A lot of folks are just worried about the fact that a lot of the layoffs were employees tasked with maintaining radar, and runway lights, and everything used navigationally in the flight deck, that if visibility is reduced, you then tune into these frequencies on land that help guide the airplane in, and those folks that were laid off are actually the people tasked with maintaining those systems."
Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said on X: "Here’s the truth: the FAA alone has a staggering 45,000 employees. Less than 400 were let go, and they were all probationary, meaning they had been hired less than a year ago. Zero air traffic controllers and critical safety personnel were let go."
Mayor Pete failed for four years to address the air traffic controller shortage and upgrade our outdated, World War II-era air traffic control system. In less than four weeks, we have already begun the process and are engaging the smartest minds in the entire world.
— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) February 18, 2025
Here’s the… https://t.co/LCL1dswC2T
Time will tell whether the staffing shakeup will have negative consequences, but another concern it seems everyone can agree on is our outdated air traffic control technology. But overhauling the system, while minimizing travel disruptions, is a tall order.
"It’s doable but we haven’t had the political will to do it," Buckley said. Sadly, maybe some dead bodies will get the attention to the folks in D.C. But it’s an antiquated system. It’s just a joke."
"The technology that’s being used has been upgraded over the years, but still it is somewhat antiquated. There is a shortage of air traffic controllers, but the standard is so high that we have to realize that yeah, we could always do things better but at what price, at what cost?" Dr. Jacobson said.
President Trump said earlier this month he wants Congress to tackle the issue of modernizing the air traffic control system.