Washington
CNN
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A commercial plane and an Army helicopter collided, a regional jet rolled over on landing and a family of five was killed after a helicopter plunged into the Hudson River – all three incidents from the first part of this year add to the anxieties of the flying public.
The crashes are among more than a hundred incidents this year, involving everything from commercial airliners to smaller, so-called general aviation aircraft often flown by private pilots. And it’s only April. Air carriers even reported a drop in ticket sales following the string of high-profile incidents, as customers reported a fear of flying.
That begs the question: Has this year been one of the most dangerous years to fly?
Reports analyzed by CNN from the National Transportation Safety Board show the number of accident investigations is down for the first quarter of 2025. The NTSB led 171 civil aviation investigations from January to March 2025, which include commercial, general, rotorcraft and specialized aircraft.
During the same time frame last year, there were 185 investigations. And the first three months of 2010 to 2019 averaged 215 investigations.
CNN transportation analyst Mary Schiavo attributes the public’s perception of declining aviation safety to the moments caught on video that “rattle everybody.” She points to January’s midair collision between a US Army helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet landing at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, caught on surveillance camera, as a prime example that struck fear in the public.
“The arrogance of flying through commercial air space without the proper equipment turned on or functioning,” Schiavo said. “I mean, that’s just arrogance beyond belief. In aviation, there’s just no room for arrogance.”
The helicopter was flying without using a tracking system called ADS-B.
“I think this year is bad, even more, other than DCA, because of all the things that have come to light. Without the NTSB, would we have ever known about the 15,000 near misses,” she said, referring to the 15,214 near miss events the board uncovered from 2021 and 2024, where aircraft were within one nautical mile of colliding at Reagan National Airport. “That’s shocking – we wouldn’t have known about that.”
Proof in the data
As inspector general of the US Department of Transportation from 1990 to 1996, Schiavo worked with both sides of the aisle and the FAA closely. Back then, she explained, accident, incident and pilot deviation rates were publicly available information, even broken down further by the standards for each type of operator.
“Now, (The FAA) stopped doing those, at least publicly, and they said, ‘Look, there are so few commercial accidents that when one accident happens, one fatal accident, it really skews the data,’” she noted.
CNN reached out to the FAA for comment, but the agency pointed to its databases online.
Many public officials have been vocal about how aviation remains the safest form of travel, despite the recent string of events.
Up until the fatal incident in January, there hadn’t been a major commercial air crash in the country since a flight operated by Colgan Air stalled and crashed into a house on approach to Buffalo, New York, in 2009.
In 2013, an Asiana Airlines flight crashed at San Francisco International Airport and killed three people, but 287 people escaped alive. There have been other flights globally that have killed Americans, but no major fatal incidents in the US have occurred since then.
But Schiavo says more needs to be done.
“They’ve never defined what the level of safety is to be safe,” she said.
The FAA needs to develop “an objective standard” for what safe means, she said, noting that the agency needs quantifiable safety measurements for the public to understand how it defines safe.
Passenger vehicle incidents have remained the deadliest mode of transportation, statistically speaking. There were about 40,000 people killed motor vehicle crashes in the US in 2023, according to the latest numbers from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Critical to distinguish
Although there are many incidents that have occurred this year, Hassan Shahidi, president and CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation, said it’s important for passengers to distinguish the small aviation incidents from the major commercial airline accidents.
Besides the crash at Reagan National Airport in January, there was also a Delta Air Lines regional jet that rolled over while landing in Toronto. All the passengers and crew survived; however, it was a significant event currently being investigated by Canada’s Transportation Safety Board.
Those are notably different accidents from the sightseeing helicopter, which crashed into the Hudson River, killing a family of five, the med-evac jet, which crashed into a neighborhood in Philadelphia killing everyone onboard, and one person on the ground, or a small airplane midair collision in Arizona that killed two.
“These are different categories and different issues,” Shahidi said. “I wouldn’t put them all in the same bucket from our perspective. Helicopter operations are unique, different equipment, and things like that, so they need to be looked at differently than passenger accidents.”
The NTSB investigations into all of this year’s crashes remain ongoing, however, the FAA stopped most helicopter flights near Washington Reagan National and after last week’s crash in the Hudson, the tour company’s operations were halted immediately.
However, Shahidi said every single accident in commercial aviation is unique. Despite the deadly incidents, the year has been relatively like past years.
“Anytime something like (the helicopter accident) happens, and you have a family, the victims, it really resonates with everybody. How could this happen? It’s very unfortunate,” he said.
