More than 100 aviation accidents this year as safety issues become higher-profile

More than 100 aviation accidents under the watch of U.S. air controllers have occurred this year as flight safety issues have become higher-profile.

There have been 119 aviation incidents in the U.S. recorded in 2025, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which is fewer than what has historically occurred the first two months of the year, going back to 1982. Nonetheless, with the recent collision between the American Airlines flight and a military helicopter last month in Washington D.C., safety issues with airplanes have received more media attention.

In January 2024, there were 80 aviation accidents, compared to 64 this past January, according to NTSB data reviewed by Just the News on Friday. February 2024 had 93 accidents, compared to 55 reported so far this February.

An aviation accident is "an occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft which takes place between the time any person boards the aircraft with the intention of flight and all such persons have disembarked, and in which any person suffers death or serious injury, or in which the aircraft receives substantial damage," according to the NTSB.

U.S. incidents

There have been several high-profile accidents in U.S. airspace over the past couple of months. On Tuesday morning, an American Airlines flight had to abort landing at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport to avoid colliding with another plane taking off on the same runway. 

An air traffic controller (ATC) instructed the American Airlines plane to perform a "go-around" at the airport to separate the planes, officials at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said, according to media reports. An American Airlines spokesperson said the plane landed safely.

A Southwest Airlines jet on Tuesday morning narrowly avoided a collision with a private jet in Chicago after it decided to ditch its landing attempt just feet from the ground. Southwest flight 2504, which departed from Omaha, Neb., landed safely at the Chicago Midway International Airport after it made the decision to abort its initial landing, the airline told CNN.

Audio from the air traffic control tower revealed that the private jet mistakenly crossed into the Southwest plane's runway as it prepared to take off for Knoxville, Tenn. The jet was directed to stop short of the runway, but appeared to misunderstand the direction.

The worst accident thus far was when an American Airlines plane collided with a military helicopter on Jan. 29 that resulted in both aircraft plunging into the Potomac River near the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. All 67 people aboard the two aircraft died.

Another plane heading to the D.C.-area airport almost crashed into a helicopter the night before the American Airlines flight crash.

Republic Airways Flight 4514 was forced to abort its first landing attempt at the airport on Tuesday after Air Traffic Control warned that a helicopter was in its vicinity. The Embraer E-175 executed a go-around maneuver, and safely landed a few minutes later, CNN reported.

Airports without towers

Two planes, a Lancair and a Cessna, collided in midair at Marana Regional Airport in Arizona on Feb. 19th, resulting in two deaths. The airport hosts a lot of flight training and doesn’t have an operating air traffic control tower. There are nearly 20,000 airports in the U.S., about 500 of which have towers.

Pilots at airports without towers often use a Common Traffic Advisory Frequency to announce their position to other pilots who are in the airport vicinity and are still required to follow all federal aviation regulations.

Only two days after the D.C. crash, a medevac jet crashed into houses in Philadelphia just after takeoff, killing six people onboard and one person on the ground.

There are “not more accidents” 

A small commuter airplane in Alaska disappeared on Feb. 6th and was found the next day, with all 10 people aboard dead.

Michael Pearson, who was an FAA air traffic control specialist for over 26 years, told Just the News on Thursday that there are “not more accidents” and “near-misses” with aircraft now, but that with the “midair collision,” the accidents have become “more deadly” and “higher profile.” “Whenever there is a major accident,” Pearson said, “it gets more media attention.”

Pearson said that the Obama and Biden administrations only paid “lip service” to fixing the problems that led to aircraft accidents. During his first term in the White House, “[President Donald] Trump tried to solve this stuff,” but there was pushback from the “deep state,” Pearson added.

The immunity program

Pearson said that it is “good” that issues with air traffic control are “getting more sunlight,” and that “one of the big causal factors is the immunity program.”

The “immunity program" Pearson referred to is the Air Traffic Safety Action Program (ATSAP), which the National Air Traffic Controllers Association says “helps resolve safety issues that otherwise might not have been identified or resolved.” 

With ATSAP, “employees are promised that no punitive or disciplinary actions will be taken as a result of reporting errors that could impact safety, provided those errors are not the result of gross negligence or illegal activity,” according to the association.

Pearson calls ATSAP an “immunity program" that results in the FAA having “no way to decertify controllers who can’t be retrained” after making mistakes.

Some of the aircraft accidents have been suspected to be the fault of ATCs. Just 14 months before the crash near the D.C-area. airport, the FAA received a safety expert report that warned America’s air traffic control system is suffering from quality control issues and staffing shortages that put safety at risk.

The November 2023 report also warned that personnel shortages among air traffic controllers were forcing people to work longer hours and make sudden last-minute changes to flight plans that increased risks.

DEI strikes again

Some former ATCs have pointed to the FAA’s change in hiring practices under the Obama administration as partly to blame for the current state of air traffic control, which led to an ongoing class action lawsuit.

In December 2013, thousands of students who had participated in the FAA’s Collegiate Training Initiative (CTI) – a program specifically designed to prepare individuals to become Air Traffic Control Specialists – were informed that their previous scores on a cognitive and skills-based test, the AT-SAT, would be discounted. Instead, the students would have to pass a biographical survey before retaking the cognitive portion of the test.

What the program graduates did not know is that only 14% of them would pass this new biographical questionnaire, despite half of them having previously passed the skills-based test and met all of the FAA pre-qualifications to be referred on the next step to becoming Air Traffic Control Specialists. Eventually, one of the CTI graduates, whose career was derailed by the biographical questionnaire, sued the FAA for discrimination in a class action lawsuit.

“Too many white people”

Pearson is a lawyer in a class action lawsuit against the FAA regarding alleged racial discrimination in the agency’s hiring practices of ATCs.

Regarding the FAA’s hiring practices, Pearson previously told Just the News that the FAA “stopped hiring” in order “to figure out how to eliminate the CTI program” because the agency leadership believed there were “too many white people.” While the CTI program wasn’t eliminated, the FAA stopped using it to hire people, he also said. 

There were 36 schools with the CTI program, before the FAA stopped hiring CTI graduates. From about 2010 through 2014, there was “no hiring done,” resulting in the FAA being “down thousands of people” as controllers retired, Pearson said.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Thursday that he plans to “supercharge” air traffic controller staffing.

“This staffing shortage has been a known challenge for over a decade, and this administration is committed to solving it,” Duffy said in a statement, adding the position requires “skill” and “rigor.”

Duffy said that starting salaries would be increased by 30% by the FAA for candidates who go to the FAA Academy for ATC positions, and the current eight-step hiring process would be reduced to five steps, shaving off four months.

“The new streamlined hiring process is just the first step to deliver on President Trump’s agenda to prioritize the American people’s safety and modernize the federal government,” he explained.