…Expert insists air travel remains safest transportation mode
…A litany of crashes in January
There is a fresh anxiety brewing globally as airplanes in recent times continue to fall off the skies leaving several dead.
The midair collision on Wednesday night over the Potomac River near Washington DC is one of the latest in a strings of global incidents with air travellers on edge.
It is feared that there are no survivors of the American Airlines crash.
Before the collision, the year 2024 also raised concerns about flights, especially in recent weeks, when more than 200 people lost their lives in two incidents just days apart.
Litany of air mishaps
Thirty-eight people died when an Azerbaijan Airlines plane crashed in Kazakhstan; four days later 179 died when a Jeju Air flight crashed in South Korea.
This is about a year after a devastating Boeing door panel blowout and a separate fiery runway collision in Japan.
A deeper look into 2024 show a worrying trend of aviation disasters.
It is reported that in early January, a fiery crash in Tokyo shocked the world, leaving five members of the Japan Coast Guard dead, although the passengers of the Japan Airlines plane escaped unharmed.
Days later, a piece of a plane fell while taking off from Portland, Oregon, leaving a gaping hole in his body.
Again, all 177 passengers survived the emergency landing, but the fallout from the incident has seen major manufacturer Boeing in the spotlight all year.
Over the summer the tragic crash of a Voepass flight in Brazil claimed the lives of 62 passengers and crew.
At the weekend, a Medical plane crashed in Northeast Philadelphia killing 7 people, including a child and mother.
According to the FAA, a Learjet 55 was en route to Springfield-Branson National Airport in Missouri when it went down.
The Learjet 55 crashed near the Roosevelt Mall in Northeast Philadelphia around 6:10 p.m. on Friday after departing from Northeast Philadelphia Airport, authorities said.
All six people on board, including a girl, her mother and four crew members were killed in the crash, according to Philadelphia’s Mayor Office.
Multiple injuries to people on the ground have also been reported after the resulting explosion left a large field of debris, damage to buildings, and burned-out cars.
Should travellers be worried?
“I don’t know that passengers should be worried, but I think it’s important for the flying public to be vocal and demand that the government and the different entities do everything possible to make air travel as safe as possible,” Anthony Brickhouse, a US-based aviation safety expert told CNN.
But even accounting for serious accidents, “statistically speaking, you’re safer in your flight than you were driving in your car to the airport,” said Brickhouse, who has decades of experience in aerospace engineering, aviation safety and accident investigation.
“Air travel remains the safest mode of transportation,” he said.
Read also: NCAA suspends Max Air operations over burst tyre
What FAA report says
The series of accidents calls at US airports in early 2023 prompted the Federal Aviation Administration, (FAA) to create an independent safety review team. Its November 2023 final report cited inconsistent funding, outdated technology, short-staffed air traffic control towers and onerous training requirements among the issues “rendering the current level of safety unsustainable.”
FAA announced some immediate action related to hiring and training new air traffic controllers. A longstanding shortage of controllers continues to put strain on US airspace.
Setback for Boeing
Boeing aircraft have been involved in majority of the crashes globally.
In January, 2024, an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft made an emergency landing in Portland after a door panel blew off in midair, leaving a gaping hole in the aircraft.
In the same year an engine fire forced a Boeing 737 to make an emergency landing in Houston, Texas, soon after takeoff. The engine ingested some plastic bubble wrap that was on the airfield prior to departure, according to United Airlines.
In Portland, Oregon, a Boeing 737-800 was forced to make an emergency landing due to fumes in the cabin on Wednesday.
Also a tyre fell off a Boeing 777-200 after it took off from San Francisco, destroying a car. The plane was bound for Japan, but it was diverted to Los Angeles, where it landed safely.
In the same year, a Boeing 737 MAX rolled off the runway in Houston and got stuck in the grass on Friday.
Boeing, which leads the commercial aircraft market alongside Europe’s Airbus, has been under intense scrutiny over its safety record since two fatal crashes involving the Boeing 737 MAX in 2018 and 2019.
The jets were grounded worldwide for almost two years after a crash killed 189 people in Indonesia in October 2018 and another killed 157 people in Ethiopia five months later.
It was found that the crashes were due to defects in the automated flight control software, which activated erroneously. The software was improved, and the Boeing 737s were revamped and cleared to fly again.
In January’s Alaska Airlines incident, the door plug of the Boeing 737 MAX 9 flew off midair. While the 2018 and 2019 crashes were caused by design defects in the flight control system, this was a defect in manufacturing with loose hardware on the aircraft.
As of February 2024, there have been a total of 529 aviation accidents and incidents involving all 737 aircraft (not all are notable enough for inclusion on this list), which have resulted in a total of 5,779 fatalities and 234 hull losses.
What the trends say
Hassan Shahidi, president and CEO of the Aviation Safety Foundation, a nonprofit organisation involved in all aspects of aviation safety who spoke to Telegraph puts things in perspective.
“In all of 2023, there have been zero deaths from commercial airplanes,” Shahidi said.
“By the end of 2024, the aviation industry had transported 5 billion passengers worldwide. 2024 was poised to repeat that safety record,” he added.
According to a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), flying today is safer than ever € news, the Telegraph reports.
In the period 2018-2022, the risk of death from air travel is calculated to be 1 for every 13.7 million passenger boardings.
That’s down from one for every 7.9 million rides in 2008-2017 and a steep drop from 1 for every 350,000 rides in 1968-1977.
In addition, research from the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical Academy revel that up to 80 percent of aviation accidents can be attributed to human error.
Pilot error is thought to account for 53 percent of accidents, while mechanical failure was found to be at fault in only 21 percent of cases, Telegraph reports
Airbus studied which part of the flight was the most dangerous and found that take-off and landing were when accidents were most likely to occur.
Safety Audit
Seyi Adewale, chief executive officer of Mainstream Cargo Limited, said considering the incessant Air crashes, he will recommend a comprehensive Audit of the Aviation Industry through two principal channels: International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the International Air Transport Association Trade association, (IATA).
Adewale said this will assist to review and update Standard Operating Procedure/ Annexes; enforce and update trainings/ programs and declare ‘Safety Emergency’ within the Industry.
He said the audit will also review Service Level Agreement between Industry partners including manning levels, schedules, rotations etc, adding that the the overall advantage of this is ‘gaps’ would be identified and closed.
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