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As the American Airlines crash adds to a recent spate of air accidents, we look at the safety of flying and find cause for hope.
ADVERTISEMENTAn American Airlines plane with 64 passengers and crew collided mid-air with a military helicopter yesterday (29 January) as it approached Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, just five kilometres south of the White House and the US Capitol. Plummeting into the Potomac River, reports are emerging that there are multiple fatalities, although numbers are still unconfirmed.This is one of several airline crashes in recent months, but according to experts, flying is still the safest form of transport.How did the American Airlines plane crash – and what was the response?Traffic controllers had requested American Airlines Flight 5342 to land on a shorter runway just minutes before the aircraft was due to land, to which the pilots agreed, adjusting their approach.Minutes later, the plane collided with a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter, which was carrying a crew of three soldiers, an Army official confirmed.Authorities are now conducting a massive search-and-rescue operation. Inflatable boats launched into the river while first responders erected light towers from the shore to illuminate the area. No official death count has been announced, yet US senator Roger Marshall of Kansas has hinted that it will be high. “When one person dies it’s a tragedy, but when many, many, many people die it’s an unbearable sorrow,” he said.Fatal crashes of American commercial airlines are rareInvestigators are already trying to piece together the aircraft’s final moments by speaking with air traffic controllers and assessing why the passenger jet lost altitude prior to crashing.In 1982, an Air Florida flight similarly crashed into the Potomac River, killing 78 people, which was attributed to bad weather. The last fatal crash of a passenger plane in the United States took place in 2008, when 49 passengers are crew were killed near Buffalo, New York, when a Bombardier DHC-8 propeller plane crashed into a house. The deadliest plane crash in US history continues to be on September 11, 2001, when four jetliners were hijacked by al-Qaida, sending two planes into the World Trade Center in New York, one into the Pentagon in Virginia, and a fourth into a field in western Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people were killed and this incident remains the deadliest terror attack in history.2024 was a deadly year for air travelThis latest plane crash in Washington has fanned the flames of recent concerns over flying: at the end of 2024, more than 200 people lost their lives in two separate incidents just days apart.Thirty-eight people died in December when an Azerbaijan Airlines plane crashed in Kazakhstan; four days later, 179 perished when a Jeju Air flight crash landed in South Korea.While recent events are still ringing in the minds of many, there were other disasters in aviation in 2024. In early January, a fiery crash in Tokyo shocked the world, leaving five members of the Japan Coast Guard dead, although passengers on the Japan Airlines plane escaped safely.Days later, part of a plane fell off when it was departing from Portland, Oregon, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the fuselage. Again, all 177 passengers survived the emergency landing, but the fallout from the event has seen major manufacturer Boeing in the spotlight all year.ADVERTISEMENTDuring the summer the tragic loss of a Voepass flight in Brazil claimed the lives of 62 passengers and crew. On top of this, multiple reports of aircraft hitting severe turbulence and injuring people, including one fatality on a Singapore Airlines flight, have given travellers cause to worry about their safety. According to the Aviation Safety Network, a total of 318 people died in aircraft accidents last year, making 2024 the deadliest year in aviation since 2018. But is flying really becoming less safe, and should we be worried if we’ve got an upcoming trip booked?ADVERTISEMENTFlying is getting safer all the timeDr Hassan Shahidi, president and CEO of Flight Safety Foundation, a non-profit involved in all aspects of aviation safety, put things in perspective for Euronews Travel. “In all of 2023, there were zero commercial jet fatalities,” he says. “By the time 2024 was over, the aviation industry had transported 5 billion passengers worldwide. And until just the past few days, 2024 was poised to repeat that safety record.”According to research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), flying is safer today than ever. In the 2018-2022 period, the risk of dying through air travel was calculated to be 1 per every 13.7 million passenger boardings. That’s down from 1 per 7.9 million boardings in 2008-2017 and a major decrease from the 1 per every 350,000 boardings in 1968 to 1977.ADVERTISEMENTResearch from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical Academy has shown that up to 80 per cent of aviation accidents can be attributed to human error. A mistake on the pilots’ part is thought to account for 53 per cent of accidents, while mechanical failure was considered to be at fault in just 21 per cent of cases.Airbus studied which part of the flight was most dangerous, and found that takeoff and landing were when accidents were most likely to occur. Both of the two December 2024 crashes happened when landing, although other factors were in play.In the Jeju Air crash, for example, there were reports of an engine being damaged after hitting a bird, and the aircraft, for an as yet unknown reason, did not have its landing gear deployed when it touched down. The investigation will be long and complex, and it’s likely to be some time before we understand exactly what happened.“This accident involved a multitude of factors, from bird strikes to landing without landing gear and flaps,” Shahidi adds. “All of this will be thoroughly investigated, contributing factors will be determined and steps will be taken to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”ADVERTISEMENTJeju Air has been inspecting its fleet of 737 ‘next generation’ (NG) aircraft, but out of an abundance of caution. Nothing so far suggests that there is a more widespread problem with the aircraft type.Airlines are advised to avoid warzonesThe Azerbaijan Airlines crash was something a little different. Although investigations are ongoing, initial assessments suggest the aircraft may have been hit by Russian air defences, causing it to depressurise and lose control. That assessment will bring to mind a similar situation from a decade ago. In July 2014, a Malaysia Airlines plane was shot down by Russian-backed forces using a surface-to-air missile while it was flying over eastern Ukraine. All 283 passengers and 16 crew members died. The investigation recommended states involved in armed conflicts close their airspace, and that operators should thoroughly assess risk when routes pass over areas of conflict.ADVERTISEMENTThe European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) publishes Conflict Zone Information Bulletins to caution air operators about potential safety threats. However, as Janet Northcote, spokesperson for EASA, explains to Euronews Travel, “EASA does not close airspace or have the right to mandate the avoidance of airspace. But the information provided here flows into the individual airline’s own safety assessments and creates awareness of any aviation safety threat.”So why was Azerbaijan Airlines flying over a conflict zone? Although many Western airlines have ceased operations to and over Russian airspace, numerous Middle Eastern and Asian airlines continue to operate in that area. Carriers from Turkey, China, the UAE and other nations are not avoiding the airspace, despite the risk.ADVERTISEMENT“Air travel in known conflict zones has significant risk,” Shaihid says. “Airlines must carry out risk assessment for their routes to ensure that the risks are mitigated and take an alternate route.”Nonetheless, no European airline currently flies to Russia or through its airspace, having heeded the advice of EASA and other agencies.Every air accident makes air travel saferThe small silver lining in the terrible year aviation has experienced is that every accident serves to make air travel safer in the future. As Simon Calder, travel correspondent for the UK’s Independent newspaper wrote in a recent column, “All the dramatic aviation events of 2024 – fatal and otherwise – will be analysed minutely to understand what can be learnt to enhance future safety.”ADVERTISEMENTIn the case of both the Jeju Air and Azerbaijan Airlines crashes, the infamous ‘black boxes’ have been recovered and sent for interrogation. These two boxes, which are actually bright orange in colour, are the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) and should shed some light on what happened prior to the crash.Accident investigators are on the ground in Kazakhstan and South Korea gathering more evidence, a process that could take some time. Following this, collected data will be analysed in a lab to determine the cause of the crash. A preliminary report will likely be made public in the coming weeks, although the final report will take longer.ADVERTISEMENTFrom these reports, various recommendations will be made to avoid a similar situation in the future. “One of the strengths of aviation safety processes is that whenever any tragedy does occur, we analyse what happened and take appropriate action to ensure, to the extent possible, that the same type of accident will not occur again,” explains Northcote.Consider any major aviation accident, and it’s possible to see the longer-term positive effect it has had on air safety. A collision over the Grand Canyon in June 1956, for example, between a TWA Super Constellation and a United Airlines DC-7 led to upgraded forms of air traffic control. ADVERTISEMENTAfter TWA Flight 800 exploded in mid-air in 1996, modifications were made to ensure fuel could not be combusted by an errant spark. Without the tragedy of 9/11, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) would never have been created. And thanks to the (still) missing Malaysia Airlines MH370, all aircraft are now tracked in real-time.“This constant cycle of improvement is fundamental to keeping the aviation safety record strong,” says Northcote. “We work with other regulators, for example the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the United States and with the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), to ensure that aviation safety standards are high globally, not only in Europe.”ADVERTISEMENTWhile manufacturers, airlines and regulators work hard to maintain safety in the skies, Northcote highlights that safe travel is a team effort. “Aviation has in general an excellent safety record, but this is no cause for complacency,” she says. “This strong safety record can only be maintained by many individual people fulfilling their role every day to ensure that operations are safe.”
