Summary
A new AP-NORC poll shows that Americans’ confidence in air travel has declined after several fatal plane crashes in 2025.
Only 64% now believe flying is safe, down from 71% last year, while the number of those who feel it is unsafe rose by 12%.
Confidence in pilots, air traffic controllers, and the federal government has also dropped. Recent crashes, including a deadly collision over Washington, D.C., have fueled public concern.
Meanwhile, Trump has begun firing hundreds of FAA employees, raising further safety worries.
I’m not flying anywhere while the orange turd is in office. Fuck it, less money for the economy I guess. U wanna fire air traffic controllers while there is an active shortage? Planes crashing left and right ever since. Hard pass.
So weird that it’s only fallen 7% considering before January 2025 we hadn’t had a fatal plane crash in almost 16 years, and now we’ve had multiple in a month.
Added with Trump firing faa employees
Just getting us peasants prepared to not have air travel available to us.
This is funny to me because the amount of commerce in the U.S. that is dependent on reliable air travel for average Americans is massive. If people stop flying the economy is going to be what ends up in freefall.
I’m not flying until this gets sorted out. The fact that we elected a fucking Russian saboteur twice is just incomprehensible. NPVIC might save us in the nick of time, but I doubt it.
I really don’t think we hold any industry to the superhuman standards we hold aviation to.
The only other industry that individuals entrust their lives to in large numbers that I can think of is the medical industry, and that kills around 100k people a year, yet people don’t quit seeking treatment en masse (problems with US medical system access and affordability aside).
Pilots are tested at least yearly with simulators dealing with emergencies of all sorts, from fires to engine failures, education and reviews of aircraft systems and aviation regulations, along with medical examinations and random drug testing to continually check fitness for flight. Cabin crew also see yearly testing dealing with emergencies, medical or things like fires in the cabin, evacuations, along with training on how to deal with passengers who may be drunk or a threat in some way.
The best time to fly is after incidents. Everyone is on high alert, training departments and unions remind crews to take extra care in their duties, all crews are aware of extra scrutiny.
You’re mostly right, but your comment also assumes independent probabilities rather than correlated probabilities of danger. Sometimes multiple crashes can trace back to the same cause: one particular manufacturing defect on a model of aircraft sold thousands of times, one bad practice on air traffic control procedure, one bad actor targeting multiple aircraft, etc.
Purely hypothetically, as an example, if it turned out that there was a terrorist group targeting aircraft via anti aircraft missiles, then that group’s success at bringing down an airliner would actually worsen the odds of passengers on other aircraft, at least until we receive external information that the threat has passed.
One bad actor causing chaos amongst the staff entrusted with keeping airlines safe….
Exactly. Some of the fears that people have are about factors that affect all flights, not just the risk of a single pilot operating a single aircraft.
Flying is still safe and has a strong safety culture built into the industry independent of government regulation, that wouldn’t change overnight even if the government regulators change. But removing a slice of Swiss cheese is still bad, and cause for concern.
Also, Boeing notwithstanding…
The best time to fly is after incidents.
That used to be good advice. The best time to fly now is before planes started falling out of the sky.
Reminds me of that guy who deliberately books vacations to places that have just suffered terrorist attacks. Cheap as fuck and super safe since there are security forces everywhere. Not sure I agree with the practice, but can’t really fault the logic.
Yep, that’s pretty similar. Might be a good travel idea, but one would have to take care regarding any issue that the locals might have with foreigners after tragedies in their communities.
Everyone dies.
Flying is still the safest form of transport.
There’s 1.17 deaths and 42 injuries per 100 million miles travelled by car in the USA. In comparison, there’s only 0.007 injuries per 100 million miles flown in commercial planes in the USA. Even trains are more dangerous at 0.1 injuries per 100 million miles.
You’re far, far more likely to be in a car crash on your way to the airport compared to being involved in a plane crash.
These stats reflect years of institutional intervention from the FAA and NTSB. With alterations to those regulators its unlikely these stats will continue to be relevant.
Even if flying gets a bit less safe, there would have to be far, far more plane crashes (at least three orders of magnitude more) for it to become anywhere near as dangerous as driving.
It also ignores how hard it is to be a pilot or a train conductor vs driving a car around town. Got an easy to obtain license and some cash and you’re golden. Try to do that with a plane or train. Takes some serious education in comparison
This is a reason why people should feel safer taking a plane or train, which is my point.
You spitting some real pre-2025 numbers unless the only car you’re including is a cyber truck
Of course they’re pre 2025… It’s only February so there’s no full year stats for 2025 yet.
Dying in a car crash takes so many forms. Instantly crushed by a truck? Or die slowly in the hospital?
But i imagine dying in an airplane almost always involves 20mins of sheer terror as you plummet towards the earth knowing that you will die, or if you might survive and be floating in the ocean for days.
I just wish traveling were a more pleasant experience in general. I gotta take an extra day off after coming back home because modes of travel in USA are so exhausting.
Yeah, it’s pretty horrible you have to fly first class to lay back any substantial amount. Even business class just gives you more ass room. I also wish they would run the cabins at a bit higher pressure. I can never seem to get used to that 10,000ft standard.
I should probably move to Colorado for a couple months, I hear once you get conditioned to altitude you don’t have problems with it anymore
I can never seem to get used to that 10,000ft standard.
The standard is 8,000 feet, not 10,000. Some planes, like the Boeing 787, are pressurized to 6,000ft instead.
Good to know, whatever it is still with me a headache half the time
I fly Sunday. I’m not worried.
The odds are still greatly in your favor, there’s little to worry about.
That said, the odds are now drastically worse than they were prior.
It’d still be a higher probability to die in the car taking them to the airport.
Well you wouldn’t be driving to the airport if you didn’t have a flight to catch! ** taps forehead
Indeed, but if we keep accelerating at this pace for a couple of years…
They should have the crash chance on the departures/arrivals screen… Ohio… 7:56am on time 67%. On boarding, Sanf Francisco 4:25pm delayed 75%.
Quick everyone, start talking about high speed rail!
Maybe we have the slightest shot of actually building out, y’know, cheap, fast, effective mass transit for once?
President Musk will never allow it.
Be prepared for cars in tunnels! And poorly functioning cars at snail pace, if that!
Not as long as the cargo railroad companies hold all the power. America needs an alternate timeline with no fascism, sane governance, and making all railroads public.
You wouldn’t build high speed rail on cargo lines, anyway. New rail corridors need to be established. The LA-Vegas line is being built along an existing interstate, which solves a lot of right-of-way and land usage issues. That’s what you want to do.
Elon is in power and has too much money shame him into building hyperloop finally
He never intended to build the Hyperloop. From the start, it was a lie to shut down a proposed project to build a west coast high speed rail line.
Yeah, and it can be defeated with elementary school level math, so anyone in government who agreed to fund it should be brought back to school (though they are probably just more corrupt than stupid).
Everyone in the industry tries to focus on how fast a hyperloop can go, and tries to keep any criticism focused on the engineering challenges (and to be clear, there are many, many engineering and safety challenges).
It should never be discussed as “LA to the Bay in X minutes”, it needs to be discussed in terms of passengers per hour.
Given that these vehicles travel very fast, passengers will need to remain seated while the vehicle is in motion. Let’s pretend that the occupants of each vehicle are capable of leaving the vehicle with their luggage in under the FAA’s targeted evacuation time of 90 seconds (even though luggage makes it take like 10x that). That’s 40 loads per hour, and let’s be generous and say they fit 40 people, that’s 1600 people per hour.
That puts it on par with a lane of car traffic. Maybe you can squeeze some more people in there, or really crack a whip to get people out quick, but you won’t be able to get to a fraction of the passengers per hour of high speed rail at ~20,000.
When you actually do calculations with all the other factors, you get ~350 passengers per hour.
High speed rail is amazing! Let’s do it
Too bad the California high-speed rail project is being threatened by President Musk.
most people aren’t aware that Air Traffic Controllers are forced to retire at 55. no old, slow reaction employees allowed.
when Reagan fired thousands of ATCs in the 80s, then hired and trained all new scabs, he inadvertently created an enormous cohort who would all be retiring at around the same time due to forced retirement.
fast forward to today,
- thousands of ATCs were aging out and being replaced with less experienced people (less of a prob now than 10ish yrs ago but still staffing is extremely lean due to Reagan)
- add to that the obsolete legacy tracking tech
- add to that cost saving (corner cutting) by aerospace corps like Boeing
- add to that major dysfunction in pilot training, screening out baddies, inexperienced pilots, and dissatisfied airline workers and unions
- add to that Trump administration purges and demoralization of federal workers
- add to that Musk getting his SpaceX cronies hands all over the system to make ‘upgrades’
data nerds can point to historical accident statistics from the past 20 years up to what, 2020? all you like. trend lines don’t often accurately predict the future, they merely describe the past.
I recommend thinking twice before placing all your loved ones on a plane over the next couple years. there’s going to be more of this.
My brother works ATC at one of the busiest airports in the country. While forced retirement is at 55, an informal poll of his coworkers that he and his buddies did this week revealed that nearly all of them are planning to take early retirement at 50.
They mapped it out and 80% of the facility will be retiring by 2030. To account for this, his facility alone will need to hire nearly 100 controllers. I asked him how many controllers they’ve hired recently. He said 2 since 2022.
We’re fucked.
Thanks Regan. And Trump. It’s gonna be a painful number of years/decade(s) for parts of the US.
This is great to read as I prepare for another trip my company need’s me to go in.
If only DEI was abolished, then these planes should never have crashed
/S
Even if there were 10x the number of accidents flying would still be one of the safest ways to travel.
But I’d still avoid it because of the ergonomics and customer service.
My confidence in air travel fell completely after the former head of QA for Boeing’s plane factory said he wouldn’t get on a Boeing plane
Thank you! I tried to make the same point in the comments of another recent article. This isn’t a reason to avoid air travel (yet).
However, it is a reason to criticize the Trump administration, and they deserve blame for the excess deaths under their watch. We should be hammering home the point that cutting regulation and oversight will nilly comes with life and death consequences. If it isn’t lack of FAA funding that kills you, it could be cuts to NIH, leaving WHO, turning a blind eye to corruption (which compromises quality - ask Russia), etc.
Firing several hundred people in a profession vital to safety that’s already stretched thin, implementing a hiring freeze so they cannot be replaced, and them blaming DEI practices for the recent crashes is certainly not going to help a thing. I have yet to see anything he’s done that is actually beneficial. I mean, I agree with the penny bit, but you can’t just bibbidy bopity boop them out of circulation.
The problem is that even if it’s still safe now, these changes cannot help, and it won’t be apparent until planes start crashing.
The industry also runs on perception of safety more than the reality. If it’s perceived unsafe, then the industry could collapse quickly.
Oh, heres the thing. Even if you WERE to convince Trump that his own direct decisions is what led to the deaths of hundreds of people? He would just shrug and not care.
Which you wouldn’t be able to do because narcissists don’t have the ability to accept that they’re at fault for something.
Airplanes aren’t as safe as trains!
And the externalities from air travel are fucking horrendous.
Totally! And trains are so much more comfortable and I don’t have to let them take my nudes before I get on.
As much as I actually like driving if I’m going to a city with good transit I vastly prefer the train. Plus the stations are usually right downtown.
The downtown stations are so very nice. I love rolling right into the core and being a few minutes from everything.
Having to train in from the airport isn’t bad, but after a long trip adding another hour to get from the airport to downtown is annoying. Of course, many US cities don’t have a train from the airport to downtown, so that only applies in developed locations.
One of the upcoming wacky infrastructure choices is the high speed rail in Las Vegas to LA. On the Vegas end the train station is out of town like it’s an airport. So you train from LA to Vegas and then… bus in? Join a massive line of taxis/ubers? It’s so very clumsy. Why the casino operators didn’t find a way for the rail station to be in the center of the strip so people fall of the train and into their casinos is still beyond my ken.
Airplanes aren’t as safe as trains!
In the US, air travel is safer by an order of magnitude. According to the National Safety Council, scheduled airlines have a passenger fatality rate per 100,000,000 miles of 0.001 while rail has a fatality rate of 0.025. Hell, busses are safer with a fatality rate of 0.0066.
I’m sure rail safety is probably better in Europe and Japan since they have better rail infrastructure and more passengers.
A /r/dataisbeautiful post from several years ago also shows a similar story.
Why doesn’t this compare time spent traveling over mileage traveled (genuine question)?
One would expect the vast majority of planes to be faster than the vast majority of trains, so of course they’d have less accidents per mile traveled even if the same number of accidents occurred (I think).
Whereas with time spent, maybe as an additional data point, it becomes fairer to compare, right?
Wikipedia does a good job explaining after the chart here.
Most people aren’t riding trains or buses hundreds of miles at a time, and there are FAR more people riding trains and buses. So per hour traveled, those will be safer.
But while you don’t take planes from say, one part of NYC to another, you CAN take trains and buses to other cities. So mileage becomes a more meaningful comparison. Sure a bus might be safer per hour, but a bus ride from NYC to LA will take many more hours than a plane ride.
It’s because passengers (mostly) use transportation to get somewhere, not to waste time. The benefit is the distance traveled, and the risk is death. If I had the option to travel to a city 500 miles away by bus or by plane, I would want to fairly compare my chances of dying by one method vs the other
I wouldn’t want to find out if traveling 1.5 hours by bus or 1.5 hours by plane was riskier. That would be apples and oranges. The bus trip might only take me 30 miles, while the plane trip would take me 500.
I don’t disbelieve you but you’re cherry picking one of the worst examples (possibly exceeded by Canada because of Lac-Mégantic) hell, the disaster that just happened in East Palestine, OH is an excellent study in just how awful train safety in the US is.
I averaged data from 2016 to 2022. What am I cherry picking?
I more meant that the safety of trains in the US shouldn’t be used as an example for overall train safety. Other countries have much more stringent laws.
Ditto, with Canada, there are serious issues with how train safety is conducted since the majority of train traffic is freight.
But the US doesn’t have other rail systems, so an apt comparison is US planes to US trains.
My original claim was that trains are safer than airplanes - I don’t know why we’re focusing on the US.
There were no passenger deaths for the derailment in East Palestine.
The East Palestine derailment investigation revealed a lot of flaws in safety checks and how over worked conductors were - I mentioned that incident less as a cause of danger and more due to how awful US safety laws on trains are.
We’re also dealing with a baseline of relatively low numbers. That means it only takes a few additional deadly accidents to become 10X worse.
I always forget what makes it the safest mode of travel.
If it’s the safest per KM, then it doesn’t matter when it’s the only way to travel.
If it’s the safest per trip, again, there often isn’t an alternative.
Is it still the safest mode of travel per time spent travelling? Because I’d imagine trains generally surpass that. And hopefully walking too in most places…
Is it still the safest mode of travel per time spent travelling?
I think per hour travelled bus and train edge out airplanes simply due to the sheer number of people riding those forms of transit every day. But not by much.
According to Wikipedia, it’s 11.1 deaths per billion hours for bus, 30 for rail, and 30.8 for air.
Edit: It’s important to note that you can’t really directly compare based on those values. Wikipedia explains why after the chart. Taking a bus from NYC to LA would be more dangerous than taking a plane from NYC to LA, even if an hour on a bus is safer than an hour on a plane, because of the number of hours the bus would take to get to its destination.
There are not actually anymore crashes than usual. The one that killed 67 was big so there is a focus on them for a while. Same thing happened after the East Palestine train derailment. Not that deregulation (and Trump) hasn’t fucked things up overall but there is not some sudden jump in crashes.
I’d say this is at least more than 50% BS as the “number of incidents” you’re referring to are mostly comprised of extremely minor things that have to be reported by law. Your train derailment example would include things like a rail car popping off the tracks inside a train yard while getting pushed around and loaded which is fairly inconsequential and shouldn’t be compared to or lumped in with something like a major derailment where toxic chemicals are dumped all over a community and then lit on fire same with plane crashes and midair collisions like we’ve been seeing.
Does this mean airlines are going to drop prices to drive tickets sales? Because I’m due for a vacation…
No, they’re going to demand government handouts, then spend it on stock buybacks and executive bonuses. Then demand more government money.
