National Review
Air Travel Is Astonishingly Safe, and This Accident Was No Politician’s Fault
By Charles C. W. Cooke
January 30, 2025 8:56 AM
The new secretary of transportation, Sean Duffy, was asked this morning whether air travel in the United States is safe. He said:
“Can I guarantee the American flying public that the U.S. has the most safe and secure airspace in the world? The answer to that is absolutely yes. We do.”
This is unequivocally true. There hasn’t been a fatal commercial aviation accident in the United States in nearly 16 years. This is despite around 800 million passengers flying every year, on more than 16 million flights, that spend about 25 million hours in the air. The numbers fluctuate, so you can’t extrapolate perfectly, but, at a conservative estimate, since the last crash in 2009 more than 10 billion passengers have flown in the U.S., on more than 150 million flights, that spent more than 225 million hours in the air. What happened yesterday was a terrible tragedy, but it was an aberration. The death toll as a result of commercial aviation in the United States since 2009 is 67. The death toll from wasps over that same period is more than 1,000. Commercial aviation is a miracle, and it’s because it’s a miracle that we are so shocked when things go wrong.
I mention this in part to add some useful context, but also because I simply do not understand what the handful of journalists and Democratic politicians who have rushed to blame Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, or the new administration in general think that they are doing. As with gun control, it is incumbent on anyone who makes a causal claim to take his thought to its logical conclusion. None of those who tried to politicize last night’s accident have been able to do that. Within hours, New York‘s David Freelander tweeted out, “Eight days ago Trump issued an executive order freezing the hiring of air traffic controllers.” Okay. And? Finish the thought for me, David. “Eight days ago Trump issued an executive order freezing the hiring of air traffic controllers, which means . . . ” what? Last night, a military helicopter crashed into a passenger jet in crowded airspace. What is the mechanism that linked this mistake to Trump’s pause on federal hiring? Trump froze future hiring, and then . . . what? Did our existing collection of air traffic controllers — a group that has thus far been totally unaffected by this order — become less diligent in response to its announcement? Were the pilots so angry about it that they no longer cared if they lived or died? Did an angry God try to interrupt the policy by wiping out 67 people? The whole thing is nonsense and superstition and monomania. The last time we had a plane crash in the United States, in February 2009, Barack Obama had been president for just over a month. Was it his fault? The idea is stupid.
We already treat our presidents as mystical talismans whose mere presence in the Oval Office makes things better or worse. To start imbuing them with the power to keep planes in the sky would be to make this much worse. It was stupid, back when he was president last time around, for Donald Trump to try to take credit for the lack of air disasters, and it is stupid, this time around, for his critics to do the opposite. This was a terrible accident — nothing more, nothing less. Not everything is about our personal political obsessions.
National Review
Air Traffic Control and the DEI Debate
By Dan McLaughlin
January 30, 2025 10:23 AM
As Charlie notes, even after last night’s air disaster culminated a series of near-misses over the past four years, American air travel remains astonishingly safe, and the likelihood is that a full investigation will find that last night’s crash of an Army Blackhawk helicopter into a commercial airliner was (1) a total freak accident, (2) the result of a mechanical problem with the helicopter, and/or (3) human error by the helicopter pilot, perhaps compounded by poor air-traffic control. Efforts to blame this on Donald Trump, whose transportation secretary Sean Duffy only took office yesterday morning, say more about the people pointing fingers than about the actual causes of the tragedy.
All that being said, it’s worth noting here as the inevitable hurdy-gurdy cranks into gear that Trump has actually moved to fix a problem with how we hire air-traffic controllers, in order to reorient it toward hiring the best people in order to make air-traffic control safer. The Biden administration was sued last year over this:
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From 1989 to 2013, the Collegiate Training Initiative program was a pipeline to a career in air traffic control. The program aimed to ensure future air traffic controllers had the skills and knowledge necessary to carry out the job. More than ten years ago, the Obama Administration scrapped 1000 qualified candidates. The administration’s justification was that the pool of applicants was not diverse enough, so they would be purged from consideration. Instead of hiring candidates with the most competency, individuals were elevated for hiring consideration based on their race…I, along with Mountain States Legal Foundation, am litigating a class action lawsuit on behalf of more than 900 prospective air traffic controllers who studied, took the pre-employment exam, and passed the test with flying colors but were dismissed because of their skin color. Our lawsuit seeks justice for all air traffic control candidates who chose this career, dedicated their lives and education to it, and were summarily denied a job for no reason other than the color of their skin. In a system with only 14,000 air traffic controllers, purging a thousand of the next generation’s best and brightest was irresponsible and unsustainable.
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Trump’s January 22 executive order aimed to end the discriminatory hiring practices that triggered the lawsuit:
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President Donald J. Trump has signed a Presidential Memorandum terminating a Biden Administration Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) hiring policy that prioritized diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) over safety and efficiency:
This Presidential Memorandum orders the Secretary of Transportation and FAA Administrator to immediately stop Biden DEI hiring programs and return to non-discriminatory, merit-based hiring.
It also requires the FAA Administrator to review the past performance and performance standards of all FAA employees in critical safety positions and make clear that any individual who fails to demonstrate adequate capability is replaced by someone who will ensure Americans’ flight safety and efficiency. . . .
Almost unbelievably, as a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiative, the Biden FAA specifically recruited and hired individuals with “severe intellectual” disabilities, psychiatric issues, and complete paralysis over other individuals who sought to work for the FAA.
President Trump is immediately terminating this illegal and dangerous program and requiring that all FAA hiring be based solely on ensuring the safety of airline passengers and overall job excellence.
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Good luck arguing in the immediate aftermath of a fatal air crash that hiring for excellence in air-traffic control is a bad idea.
Correction: this post initially misidentified Sean Duffy as the head of the FAA.
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