Since Donald Trump was inaugurated into office as the president of the United States of America on January 20, 2025, the country has recorded seven air crashes.
On January 29, 2025, there were no survivors after the night’s midair collision between an American Airlines regional jet and a US Army Black Hawk helicopter in the Washington, DC, area — the deadliest since 2001.
In January, 31, a medical transport jet with a child patient, her mother and four others aboard crashed into a Philadelphia neighbourhood shortly after takeoff on the Friday evening, exploding in a fireball that engulfed several homes.
On February 5, 2025, 10 people were killed in a plane crash in Alaska, officials have said. The Cessna Grand Caravan aircraft, operated by regional operator Bering Air, was travelling from Unalakleet to Nome on a Thursday when it lost radar contact.
On February 10, 2025, a Learjet veered off the runway after landing at Scottsdale Airport in Arizona and crashed into a Gulfstream 2100 business jet. One person died upon impact, according to Scottsdale Fire Capt. Dave Folio.
On February 12, 2025, a two-seat EA-18 Growler went down around 10:15 a.m. local time, according to a Navy official. In a screen grab from CCTV from Kona Kai Marina, the jet was shown going down in San Diego. The Coast Guard said the pilots were rescued by a fishing vessel after being in the water for about a minute.
On February 16, 2025, two people died after a small plane crashed soon after it took off from a municipal airport in Georgia, around 30 miles east of Atlanta.
The most recent is the February 17, 2025 crash when a Delta Airlines jet attempting to land at Toronto Pearson Airport amid strong winds and drifting snow crashed and flipped over on the tarmac on Monday afternoon, finally coming to a rest with its belly up and with at least one wing shorn off.
Despite the crash landing, all 80 people aboard Flight 4819 from Minneapolis were evacuated.
Trump fires aviation workers.
The Trump administration has begun firing several hundred Federal Aviation Administration employees, upending staff on a busy air travel weekend and just weeks after a January fatal midair collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
Probationary workers were targeted in late-night emails Friday notifying them they had been fired, David Spero, president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union, said in a statement.
The impacted workers include personnel hired for FAA radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance, one air traffic controller told The Associated Press. The air traffic controller was not authorized to talk to the media and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Trump blames DEI policies.s
At his first news conference since the aircraft collision over the Potomac River, President Donald Trump inferred that diversity, equity and inclusion programs could be the cause of the crashes.
“We have to have our smartest people” as air traffic controllers, Trump said Thursday morning. “It doesn’t matter what they look like, how they speak, who they are. They have to be talented, naturally talented. Geniuses. Can’t have regular people doing their job. We can’t have regular people doing this job. They won’t be able to do it, but we’ll restore faith in American air travel.”
Trump discussed the Federal Aviation Administration’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, undePresidents’s Joe Biden and Barack Obama. He cited the FAA’s acknowledgement of the underemployment of employees with disabilities.
A week before he took office, Trump said that the FAA website said “people with severe disabilities are the most underrepresented segment of the workforce, that they want them” to be “air traffic controllers. I don’t think so.”
A White House memo said the Biden administration recruited “individuals with ‘severe intellectual’ disabilities in the FAA” under diversity, equity and inclusion hiring.
Trump also railed against Pete Buttigieg, former Transportation Secretary who served under Biden, calling him a “disaster.”
Trump went on to attack the Obama and Biden administrations, saying they lowered requirements for air traffic controllers in service of DEI. “Their policy was horrible, and their politics was even worse,” he said.
On his second day in office, Trump issued an executive order to wipe out DEI programs throughout the federal government, including at the FAA.
He said his order was “very powerful, and restoring the highest standards of air traffic controllers.”
Reed Kimbrough, a former Army helicopter pilot who is a DEI consultant, told NBC News he was taken aback by Trump’s comments.
“To say those things that had no bearing on any facts and a lack of credible information is just, it’s just jarring,” said Kimbrough, who is Black. “While families are grieving, to turn this into an attack on DEI is disturbing. The lack of empathy, the lack of decorum — using profanity at a press conference — and to politicize a tragedy is really unconscionable.”
In a statement to NBC News, Derrick Johnson, NAACP President said “The President has made his decision to put politics over people abundantly clear as he uses the highest office in the land to sow hatred rooted in falsehoods instead of providing us with the leadership we need and deserve.”
What the data says
The United States saw double the number of fatal plane crashes under President Joe Biden’s first four weeks in office compared to the same period under President Donald Trump’s second administration, federal data reviewed by Fox News Digital shows.
According to Fox News Digital, there were 10 fatal plane crashes in the United States between Jan. 20, 2021, and Feb. 18, 2021, according to the National Transportation Safety Board’s Case Analysis and Reporting Online, or CAROL, which has recorded aviation accidents since 1962. There were four fatal plane crashes recorded during the same period under the second Trump administration — from inauguration day to Feb. 18 — the data shows.
Fox News Digital found that during the Biden administration’s approximate first month in office, there were U.S.-based fatal plane crashes in Janesville, Wisconsin; St. Thomas, Caribbean Sea; Tehachapi, California; Galt, Missouri; Belvidere, Tennessee; Chitina, Alaska; Hackberry, Louisiana; Port Angeles, Washington; Boynton Beach, Florida; Rio Rancho, New Mexico. A total of 18 individuals died in the 10 crashes.
Swalwell declares ‘all crashes are Trump’s fault’
Eric Michael Swalwell an American lawyer and politician serving as the U.S. representative for California’s 14th congressional district has been facing backlash online after suggesting President Donald Trump is to blame for a small plane crash in Georgia this weekend.
Swalwell took to social media Monday morning to declare that Trump has had “more plane crashes” in his first month in office than any other U.S. president. He then doubled down on the comment with a blunt statement to Fox News Digital.
“Trump is President. President Trump is in charge of air safety. All crashes are Trump’s fault,” he said.
Trump in his first week in office did announce sweeping personnel changes, including a hiring freeze. But aviation experts said there was little that Trump did that could have precipitated the crash between a commercial jet from Wichita, Kansas, and a military Black Hawk helicopter. There was simply too little time — less than 10 days after Trump was sworn in — for any of his broadly worded executive orders to have had an effect, experts said.
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