From door plugs blowing off to mid-air collisions, 2025 has been a turbulent year for aviation. Join us as we examine the recent spate of airplane incidents that have made headlines and sparked public concern. Is flying actually becoming more dangerous, or are we just more aware of every incident in the social media age?
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00:00A lot of people are traveling this time of year and when you see close calls like this and plane
00:05crashes, people start to worry, right? Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're breaking down just why
00:11it seems like airplanes are, well, breaking down. There's been another fatal plane crash,
00:16this one in Philadelphia, even as investigators piece together evidence from Wednesday's deadly
00:21midair collision in Washington, D.C. We have more on the breaking news here at 7. We are learning
00:26more about the plane that caught on fire at Denver International Airport, the airport confirming that
00:32an American Airlines flight caught fire at gate C-38. You can see the smoke pouring out of that
00:38area here in this video. To paraphrase the Family Guy theme song, it seems today like all you see
00:43is plane crashes, plane crashes, and plane crashes on TV. Since early 2024, and particularly in the
00:49early months of 2025, it's felt like every other week brings about a new story of some aviation
00:55malfunction, defect, or otherwise frightening in-air experience. You'll likely have heard of
00:59Alaska Airlines flight 1282, or maybe a little less formally, that flight where a freaking door
01:05blew off after takeoff. You can hear the wind as those passengers were coming back in after that
01:10pilot declared an emergency landing. Clearly some issue where that portion of the wing, or of the
01:15side of the aircraft rather, blew out. Now this is a 737 MAX 9. It's an aircraft that was just put
01:21into service in November of this year. Now on January 5th, 2024, an unassuming Alaska Airlines
01:27flight departed from Portland, Oregon on its way to Ontario, California at 5.06 p.m. Six and a half
01:32minutes later, a poorly installed door plug separated from the plane's airframe, resulting in
01:37an uncontrolled decompression. Thankfully, no one was seriously injured during the incident, and the
01:42flight safely returned to Portland International Airport just 20 minutes after it had taken to the
01:47skies. The accident created a media firestorm, and a subsequent investigation revealed that Boeing,
01:53manufacturer of the offending machine, had taken a lax approach to quality control procedures.
01:58Flight 1282 severely damaged Boeing's credibility and stoked mass panic about the safety of flying.
02:04The preliminary NTSB report found the plane's fuselage was delivered to Boeing with defective
02:09rivets, which required removal of the door panel to fix. This September photo of the plane during
02:15final assembly shows that door panel in place, but at least three of the bolts missing. News about
02:21Boeing's failure to protect its customers made headlines throughout the rest of 2024, as further
02:26research into flight 1282 revealed an unfortunate pattern of cutting corners at the American
02:31aerospace manufacturer. Boeing machinists later went on strike from September to November, costing
02:36the corporation nearly $10 billion before a new contract was agreed to. So yeah, a bad year to be Boeing.
02:43They hear safety is our number one priority, but what they see is that that's only true as long as
02:49your production milestones are met, and at that point it's push it out the door as fast you can.
02:54Multiple lawmakers said they want Boeing to once again be an American success story,
03:00and while they called for change, there are no specifics coming from Congress, at least in this
03:05moment, to try to force that change. That's especially when you factor in that 2024 was
03:10the deadliest year for flying since 2018, with disasters like those seen in South Korea, Germany,
03:16and Thailand adding to growing public wariness around commercial aviation. As if those incredibly
03:21frightening incidents weren't bad enough, a slew of in-air tragedies in the first quarter of 2025
03:27only served to scare people even more and cause the general public to wonder, is flying safe anymore?
03:33The new transportation secretary today announced he is permanently limiting helicopter flights
03:38around Washington, D.C., and the FAA will roll out artificial intelligence to identify close-call
03:45trends nationwide. Over the course of just a few days in January, the United States experienced
03:50some of its most headline-making aviation accidents ever. On January 29th, American Airlines Flight
03:565342 collided with a U.S. Army Sikorsky UH-50 Black Hawk helicopter in midair over the Potomac
04:03River in Washington, D.C. Tragically, everyone involved in the crash died. That's all 64 passengers
04:09and the three crew members of the helicopter. We're going to make sure we've learned from this air
04:14disaster, and we're going to pay it forward so there's not other families that have to go
04:19through the pain and anguish of losing a loved one. It comes as the NTSB today reported a staggering
04:25number of close calls at Reagan National, with choppers flying down the Potomac River right off
04:30Runway 33. The deadliest American air disaster in almost 25 years, President Donald Trump blamed
04:36the collision on the diversity, equity, and inclusion policies set by the Federal Aviation
04:40Agency. The president's remarks were widely condemned and were criticized for their inaccuracy.
04:45This was especially pronounced once it became clear that, according to the National Transportation
04:50Safety Board, the, quote, helicopter crew may have had bad information on the altitude from
04:54their altimeter, as the pilots had differing altitudes in the seconds before the crash.
04:59New information revealing the Route 4 corridor highlighted in yellow allowed helicopters to get
05:04far too close to the flight landing path marked by the dotted line. How did the FAA not know? How did
05:10they not study the data to say, hey, this is a hot spot, we're having near misses, and if we don't
05:16change our way, we're going to lose lives. Weeks later, Trump further politicized the incident by
05:22firing hundreds of FAA employees, a move harshly criticized by aerospace industry insiders. One
05:28such insider, head of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists Union, David Spiro, speculated
05:34that the firings, quote, will increase the workload and place new responsibilities on
05:38a workforce that is already stretched thin. I do think the American public does need to
05:42be concerned about, you know, not only my firing, but also the firing of so many public safety,
05:50national security professionals at the FAA and, you know, within the Department of Transportation,
05:56but, you know, writ large also throughout the federal government. Of course, as we stated a
06:01little earlier, American Airlines Flight 5342 wasn't the last deadly flight of January 2025.
06:07Two days later, on January 31st, Medjet's Flight 56 crashed in Philadelphia, killing all seven
06:13people on board, as well as one other person on the ground, in addition to 24 additional injuries.
06:19Now at 11, new details about that deadly medical jet crash in northeast Philadelphia. Investigators
06:24are combing through the burned cars and damaged homes for clues, while neighbors try to fully
06:29process exactly what happened last night. The latest on the investigation into what caused
06:34that aircraft to go down just moments after takeoff. Air travelers faced yet another scary
06:40headline a few weeks later. On February 17th, Delta Connection Flight 4819, arriving in Toronto
06:46from Minneapolis, crashed and overturned on the runway. Miraculously, no one was killed, although
06:5121 people reported injuries, but all were discharged from hospitals in just a few days.
06:56While consumer confidence in air travel remains at a respectable level, there are signs that people
07:02are becoming increasingly wary of planes. According to an Associated Press poll, approximately 6 in 10
07:07people surveyed, quote, say traveling by plane, car, or foot is very or somewhat safe. The poll
07:13also found that the public has little confidence in the federal government to maintain air safety.
07:18There's not just one thing that went wrong. There may be one thing that stands out above
07:25all others, but there's always going to be a number of things that are lined up that allow
07:30this accident to occur. So all of this begs the question, are planes crashing more often? While
07:35there have, of course, been a number of high profile incidents over the course of the past
07:39year or so, that doesn't necessarily mean that airplanes are altogether any less safe than they
07:44have been in the past. The BBC, analyzing U.S. and worldwide trends in aviation data, quote,
07:49found that over the past two decades, there has been a general downward trend in air accidents.
07:54To be an air traffic controller is rigorous. The hiring, screening, and then the school,
08:01they wash out about 30% of those who enter. The 70%, it's about a two-year program before they're
08:07actually going to control aircraft. And to even suggest that there's anything but the best and
08:12brightest out there, it's a tough job. They do it well. Before we continue, be sure to subscribe
08:18to our channel and ring the bell to get notified about our latest videos. You have the option to
08:23be notified for occasional videos or all of them. If you're on your phone, make sure you go into
08:27your settings and switch on notifications. According to the National Transportation Safety
08:34Board, quote, NTSB data shows a general fall in air accidents in the U.S. from 2005 to 2024,
08:40despite a significant increase in the overall number of flights over this period. That's in
08:44addition to data from the International Civil Aviation Organization, or ICAO, a U.N. body that
08:50backed up evidence of such a downward trend, even when considering their broad definition of what
08:54constitutes an air accident. Said Sir David Spiegelhalter, emeritus professor of statistics
08:59at the University of Cambridge, quote, random events do not occur evenly. They tend to cluster.
09:04So unfortunately, we can expect aircraft accidents to appear to be connected even when they are not.
09:10Let's not lose sight of the fact that it's been 12 years. We move, what, 90 million people a year
09:18without incident. We kill 38,000 people a year on the highways, and we've killed no one in an
09:23airplane. So it's a remarkably safe system. Nevertheless, it's a tragedy, and I feel
09:30it was horrible when you see what happened. Similarly, The Telegraph's Greg Dickinson
09:35has spoken to how these statistics can seem simple and straightforward, but are actually
09:39highly nuanced and complex. Said Dickinson, quote, it is worth considering that accidents
09:44have always occurred at 35,000 feet, but we have greater awareness of these with the proliferation
09:49of smartphones and social media. If every incident, however minor, is captured on video and
09:54posted online, the upshot is a skewed sense of flying becomes less safe. But the opposite is,
09:59in fact, true. Yes, 2024 was a deadly and tragic year for aviation, but Dickinson is quick to point
10:05out that airplanes have actually never been safer and more accident-free. John Grant, an employee at
10:10the flight database and statistics company OAG, is quoted as saying, quote, in 2024, there were over
10:1737 million scheduled flights operated by airlines around the world, and the number of major incidents
10:22could be counted on two hands. As such, it seems that given the available information, human error
10:28is largely to blame for the painful aviation debacles we've talked about today. Obviously,
10:32these incidents are, they garner a lot of attention, and they should, especially from the
10:37industry. We need to investigate all of them and learn from them. But as the flying public, I think
10:43it's really important to understand what goes on behind the scenes that you don't really see
10:48as a flying passenger. In fact, according to pilot Brian Smith, quote, so improved has been technology
10:55that human factors like pilot error have overtaken mechanical or system failure as the main cause of
11:00accidents. So you can take a sigh of relief and make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in
11:04their full upright position. There is an enormous amount of effort, a very variable alphabet soup
11:10of programs that ensure your safety, that collect information on every kind of hazard and risk,
11:17that close the loop on that and make sure that those are mitigated.
11:21Where will you take your next flight to? Be sure to let us know in the comments below.