A concerning frequency of airplane crashes in 2025, including commercial and private flying, has left many people worldwide anxious about air travel and its current safety. While flying remains the safest form of travel and incidents have overall declined since 2000, over a dozen instances that the media has heavily publicized since January have jet setters and casual fliers alike on edge and wary of booking flights. As soon as March, multiple sources reported declining airline sales, resulting in cheaper prices but not nearly as many sold-out flights as usual.
The first major incident that occurred this year was a tragic accident near Reagan Washington Airport involving an American Airlines regional jet and a U.S. Army helicopter. The accident resulted in 67 fatalities. The cause of this collision was reportedly because the military’s aircraft system was turned off, which normally allows other airplanes to be detected in the air, so collisions do not happen. What’s more suspect is a recent report detailing that a hotline between the military and Washington air traffic controllers has not been operational since 2022, according to the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA).
“It’s scary to think that an accident like this happened because of a miscommunication,” Dominic Baker (11) said.
Not too long after, on January 31, a medical transport jet crashed shortly after takeoff from Northeast Philadelphia Airport. Tragically, all six people on the plane lost their lives including Lizeth Murillo Ozuna and her daughter Valentina, both of whom were returning from a spinal treatment procedure, with an additional 24 resulting injuries on the ground. More troubling is the fact that the black box recording, which typically contains vital cockpit sound recordings to better understand air collisions, was inexplicably found to be blank
Then, on February 17, a Delta Airlines flight crashed near the Toronto Pearson International Airport after departing from Minneapolis. The aircraft flipped over and caught fire, injuring 21 passengers, all of whom miraculously survived the crash. When the Canadian Transportation Safety Board investigated whether it was a mechanical or pilot error, preliminary results found the plane’s right-wing side-stay, which is the structure that supports the landing gear, to be damaged, causing the wing to detach and igniting a fuselage.
On a lesser scale but equally as frightening, on March 13, a jet crashed shortly after takeoff from Mesquite Metro Airport in Texas, which resulted in the death of the pilot, Eric Forsythe, Jr., who failed to send a distress signal at least in part because the plane was only in the air for 30 seconds. Forsythe crashed near a residential neighborhood and narrowly missed the houses.
A similar event occurred even closer to home in Brooklyn Park on March 29, where a single pilot in a private plane crashed into a residential home. The pilot, Terry Dolan, tragically passed away at the age of 63. Dolan stopped responding to an air traffic controller minutes before the crash and, soon after, the plane was seen making a nosedive toward a house. However, the home that the plane crashed into only had one person inside at the time and managed to escape safely.
“I feel there should be more checkups on the planes and more maintenance on the planes,” Jonathan Lerach (12) said.
President Trump’s appointed Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy spoke on the January Washington, D.C. collision, saying that it was “absolutely preventable,” and further explained the importance of the safety systems and communication with the aircraft that nearly hit them.
All of the airplane collision cases this year have been a result of either a malfunction in either communication, or the plane itself. Many of the parts that are being used for these planes are becoming older and deteriorating over time and are the root cause of the issue, many of the systems are so outdated that the FAA can no longer find spare parts and instead rely on older technology.
