Is It Safe To Fly In America?

Written By Leeja Miller

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Transcript:

Mid-air collisions, radar and communications outages, chronic understaffing, in the last few months the US airspace and the air traffic controllers who manage it have been under intense scrutiny. Last week, a hearing before the National Transportation Safety Board revealed some of the causes of a crash in January at the Ronald Reagan National Airport of an American Airlines airplane and a Black Hawk helicopter which killed 67 people. The conditions in air traffic control, combined with safety concerns that went unanswered by the FAA, likely caused the collision, and it’s unclear whether this administration has the bandwidth, will, or capabilities to make the necessary changes to avoid further disasters. But this is bigger than just the Trump regime. What we’re experiencing in US air travel is the culmination of decades of mismanagement, mostly dating back to say it with me Ronald Fuckin Reagan himself. Today, we’re breaking down what happened during that crash on January 29th, the problems that have been plaguing our air traffic controllers, and whether you should be concerned if you, like me, have some airplane travel coming up in the near future.

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Ok we’ll get into whether and what to be concerned about but let me just assuage your fears because I also have flight anxiety and I’m not here to increase yours. Airplane travel in the US remains the safest form of transportation. The deadly crash over the Potomac in January was the first fatal crash involving a major US airline in over 15 years, and the worst airplane crash in nearly 25 years in the US. But that crash, combined with a number of reported near misses and a 90-second communications blackout at Newark Airport in the last few months has made it seem like our airspace has become a treacherous place. Add on top of that the fact that air traffic is run by a federal agency at a time when DOGE and Trumpian policies have caused mass chaos across the federal government, budgets and personnel slashed, and a move fast break things mentality does not exactly leave one feeling OPTIMISTIC about anything being run by the federal government at the moment. Move fast break things doesn’t translate well to government agencies, especially the ones managing thousands and thousands of airplanes moving at 250 miles per hour 40,000 feet in the air. The fact that we put our bodies in those things is actually fucking stupid. Every time I get into a plane I’m like this is unnatural my body wasn’t meant to go this fast and this high. And yet, it remains the safest mode of transportation, air traffic controllers themselves say they do not worry about flying here. Aviation industry analyst Robert Mann recently told The Guardian that he was confident in airline safety despite the problems I’m going to get into, saying “There’s a primacy in this business. Whether you’re working at airlines or the FAA, safety is the first thing. … I’m not worried about safety, but I might be worried that my flight will be four hours late.” So please take a damn breath. All that being said, the recent attention provides a good opportunity to improve the system, make it safer, and also potentially make it more efficient, as a lot of the problems we’ll discuss don’t necessarily lead to disaster but can lead to excessive delays and other issues that make air travel more of a headache than it needs to be.

First, what happened on the night of January 29th. The hearing before the National Transportation Safety Board or NTSB this last week provided some insight. The Black Hawk helicopter was flying a training route using night vision goggles. Meanwhile, a regional American Airlines flight was descending onto Runway 33 at the Reagan National Airport. Their paths crossed at just the right altitude, leading to a mid-air collision, causing both aircraft to catch fire and crash into the Potomac River. All 67 people on board the aircrafts died. So what went wrong? A number of things, some of which were completely preventable and were known issues. One FAA official in charge of the DC area testified at the NTSB hearing that all the way back in 2023 he sent a memo to his district supervisor in the FAA recommending reduction in the rate of arrivals at the Reagan airport because air traffic control was struggling to keep up with traffic. He said that, nearly every day, air traffic was exceeding the airport’s capacity. In response to his memo, his supervisor said “we are not going to go in that direction” and that it “wasn’t a good time” to make the request because Congress was in the middle of working on an FAA bill. That FAA bill actually ended up ADDING flights to the DC airport, in part so our lawmakers had an easier time traveling to their home states. Despite this, the FAA could still have elected to restrict the flow of traffic to the Reagan airport so that air traffic control could better manage the capacity. But outside pressure from the FAA, politicians, and the airlines who benefit from increased traffic because more flights means more dollars all created a situation that was politically fraught, leading the higher ups at the FAA, apparently, to want to avoid decreased traffic, despite these warnings.

In order to manage the increased traffic, instead of cutting back, they elected to open Runway 33, a shorter runway that pilots were less comfortable landing on. Airlines, again drunk on money grabbing, decided to go with it, though they did provide pilots with extra training for landing on that runway. So, sure, pilots became more comfortable with landing on the shortened runway. The problem is that to get to that runway required them to fly over a helicopter training course known as Route 4. That course requires helicopters to maintain a lower elevation of under 200 feet, but elevation trackers in the helicopters can often be off by 100 or so feet. On January 29th, the helicopter was about 78 feet higher than it was supposed to be. This was a known issue. Back in 2022 it was recommended that Route 4 be moved farther away from the airport, which was dismissed as “too political” of a move. So they asked instead to mark route 4 hot spots on flight maps to warn pilots of places where crashes were more likely. That didn’t happen either.

In lieu of these more effective measures, the air traffic controllers were left with limited means to prevent crashes, including just telling the helicopter to keep an eye out. Just be careful!! On the night of January 29th, the air traffic controller on duty had the helicopter pilots rely on their own visual separation to tell whether they were too close to incoming jets, which again is problematic because of the equipment available to them but was one of few options the controller had available because of the lack of changes from higher ups.

So you’ve got an overcrowded airport with too much traffic, a stopgap measure to use a too-short runway, and a dangerously close helicopter route. Add to that the bleak conditions inside the air traffic control room. Human error also contributed to the crash. That night, the controller didn’t tell the airplane pilots that a helicopter was nearby, which was a break in protocol that the air traffic controller couldn’t explain in interviews after the fact. The air traffic controller was juggling two separate jobs that night, though, assigned to both airplane and helicopter traffic even though two people were supposed to handle that amount of work normally. DC air traffic controllers had been pleading for support personnel amid staffing shortages, and had been under a lot of stress in the lead up to the crash because of understaffing. So the FAA had been warned, in at least three separate ways, of the potential for disaster like the one that happened in January. It knew that Reagan airport had too much traffic, it knew that Runway 33 was a stopgap measure, it knew that Route 4 was dangerously close. And it knew that air traffic control was understaffed and stressed. Despite this, because of political pressure and pressure from airlines to keep the flow of traffic up, the FAA did nothing to improve safety conditions, which led to the crash. Testimony last week did indicate that the DC airport has since been given more support staff and Route 4 has been shut down. Deep issues, however, still remain.

Some of these deep issues can be traced back to, say it with me, Ronald Fucking Reagan. Because he ruined everything. Back in 1981, air traffic controllers around the country went on strike to protest the difficult working conditions. In retaliation, Reagan fired them all. Nearly 11,000 of them. ELEVEN THOUSAND. For reference, there are currently 10,800 certified controllers. Total. In the country. And Reagan fired 11,000. That, combined with his aggressive budget cuts kicked off staffing shortages and budget restrictions at the FAA for nearly half a century. As labor historian Joseph McCartin, who literally wrote the book on Reagan’s decision to fire the striking controllers, told The Guardian, quote ““The natural rhythm of the system broke down and we never fully recovered. We’ve improved over time, but the FAA still has grave difficulty staffing facilities. … Doge has made things only worse. The entire system that federal employees operate under has been terribly destabilized. The FAA exists in a world where this entire project of the federal government is teetering.”

Two areas where this is felt the most is in the technology available to air traffic controllers as well as the training and retention of air traffic controllers themselves. Pilots of course require extensive and rigorous training in order to safely get us to our destinations, but they are only part of the operation. Air traffic control is exceptionally complex and requires a strong attention to detail and ability to work under pressure. Air traffic controllers, some of whom are in those towers you see at airports but many of whom are in facilities miles away from the airport in dark rooms staring at radar screens and communicating with pilots, are usually required to work overtime, 6 days per week. By all accounts that I could find, the air traffic control profession attracts adrenaline junkies who thrive under that level of pressure and literal life or death stakes. Air traffic controllers, who have increasingly taken to social media to voice their concerns about their profession, seem, to me, like the swashbuckling type. They remind me of the line cooks Anthony Bourdain describes lovingly in Kitchen Confidential, whom he describes as akin to pirates, a description that based on my experience working in restaurants is accurate, air traffic controllers are like that, but with really good math skills. Like it’s just one of those professions that attracts a rough and tumble crowd that gets off on the pressure. [insert clips]

It is also a field dominated by white men, 60% of air traffic controllers are white men, with reports of women and minorities facing an incredibly hostile working environment. In some locations. Not all. Because there is also a shocking lack of uniformity among how facilities are run across the country. The way you become an air traffic controller is by applying to the FAA academy in Oklahoma, undergoing mental tests and background checks, completing a 3 or 4 month course at the Academy, and then getting placed at a facility to complete an apprenticeship. It can take upwards of 3 or 4 years to become an official air traffic controller, if you make it through at all. A recent Washington Post investigation found that 20 percent of new hires fail to become a controller at the first facility they’re sent to. And that’s just the average, some facilities have a much higher failure rate, like the New York TRACON, where only 31% of trainees become full fledged controllers. That facility has 125 fully certified controllers but to be fully staffed would need 226 controllers. While the stakes and intensity of the job make it absolutely essential that training weeds out the hopefuls who couldn’t handle the pressure, reports indicate that some facilities create unnecessarily hostile environments for new recruits as well as existing hires. This includes long hours but also hostile, hazing-style treatment of new trainees, and a mentality that the air traffic control profession is an elite club that you have to prove your way into. Which is, I think, typical of any high stakes profession that will easily run you dry and take you for everything you’ve got if you let it, speaking from my experience working very briefly in Big Law where the partner I reported to was sending emails the day after she gave birth and associates wore their burnout like a badge of honor and I was actively bullied and gaslit by senior associates because that’s just how you prove yourself!!! It only took 10 months before I was like holy shit this is not worth spending my one wild and precious life on!!!! Add to that the pressure of literally holding peoples lives in your hands and having to do complex math on the fly?? That would put most people in a coma.

And there are reports that, on top of this, women and minority trainees face open sexism and racism because of the cultures in some of these facilities, leading to unnecessary numbers of dropouts who likely could have handled the work but for the horrible environment. All this with a starting take home pay as low as $55,000 and often being forced to relocate away from family and established support networks to wherever the FAA places you for your apprenticeship. Once you make it through, salaries can go up to as much as $225,000 for certified controllers, plus substantial overtime pay on top of that. Which is great, I want the people controlling the skies to be well paid, but that is only one part of the equation. Really high salaries only gets you so far when you are working 60 plus hour weeks on an incredibly high stakes, stressful job that requires full focus and attention. If you’re not sleeping, not taking care of yourself, and stressed the fuck out, that’s going to impact your ability to make quick calls and effectively follow even the best and safest protocol in the world. Similar to how it makes me nervous to know how long the shifts are for the doctors and nurses that provide our healthcare, it makes me nervous to know there could be some guy on his 8th hour of intense focus, underslept and stressed telling my pilot how to navigate the skies.

And on top of that, he’s probably doing so using old as fuck technology. Like unconscionably old technology. Like literal floppy disks. In June, the acting FAA administrator Chris Rocheleau testified before the House Appropriations Committee that air traffic control operations in the US still rely on floppy disks, paper printouts, and computers running on Windows 95. An FAA assessment back in 2023 found that over one third of the US’s air traffic control systems are “unsustainable” with some starting to fail. The 90 second complete communications blackout at Newark a few months ago was due to a burnt out faulty wire. Some equipment is so old that the FAA can’t get spare parts to service them anymore. 92% of the FAA’s capital budget goes toward maintaining the outdated equipment, making it truly impossible to improve the existing infrastructure.

Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy recently held a press conference to announce plans to overhaul the FAA. Just as an aside, because if you dig into the Wikipedia article of literally any Trump appointee you will find some of the most batshit crazy stuff that makes you truly wonder how the fuck Trump’s cronies find these people, Sean Duffy was a professional lumberjack before joining the 1997 cast of The Real World Boston. He then became a lawyer and was elected to the Wisconsin state house of representatives. He left Congress in 2019 because of health concerns with his NINTH CHILD. He has nine children. He then went on to do a stint at Fox News, naturally, before being named Secretary of Transportation. He blamed the January 29th crash on DEI hiring practices with the FAA. So that’s who we’re working with here. Oh he’s also the acting administrator of NASA. Because why not. Efficiency!

Anyway, Duffy held a press conference to announce an overhaul of the FAA, including updating equipment and pushing for more air traffic control hires, and promised to complete the overhaul in the next 4 years, a promise pretty much everyone with actual knowledge of the state of air traffic control in this country dismissed as not possible in that time frame. Trump’s big beautiful bill approved 12 and a half billion dollars for FAA overhaul, though Duffy said the total overhaul would likely take about 31 billion to achieve. It’s unclear where that money would come from and whether Congress would ever appropriate that much.

Experts have pointed out that even this overhaul is likely just a bandaid on an entire apparatus that doesn’t work. Air traffic controllers for their part lament that increasing staffing and the number of controllers will take years to implement, if it even happens at all, and in the meantime they are suffering from PTSD from the stress of the job, are unable to manage their mental health because any diagnosis of a mental health disorder could lead to them fully losing their job, struggle to get any time off, and continue to work unsustainable hours. Not to mention the fact that training more recruits doesn’t address the underlying hostile work environment, likely made all the more hostile now that the Trump regime is intent on rooting out “DEI” initiatives.

And then there’s concern with the actual administration and oversight of our skies. The NTSB investigates aviation accidents, while the FAA oversees air traffic in the US, including hiring, training, and managing air traffic control facilities, creating air traffic regulations, and more. These two bodies, the NTSB and the FAA are often a bit hostile towards each other and at the hearing last week the NTSB accused the FAA of being opaque and not cooperating with their investigation into the crash. Like any agency, the FAA is subject to the political whims of whomstever is in office. The agency is also tasked with regulating itself, meaning there’s not a lot of outside oversight happening to ensure things are running smoothly. Add on top of that the fact that airlines are operating under the typical capitalist ideal of constant growth, profits over people, more more more. The government can’t keep up.

And a lot of the problems with the system come down to the entire way it’s structured. The FAA is the body in charge with both managing air traffic as well as regulating it. It is regulating itself. Many critics point out that the government’s job is absolutely in regulating, but it should not be in charge of the actual management of air traffic. That is a job better left to a non-governmental entity. As recently reported in The Atlantic, quote “Simply stated, air-traffic control is a 24/7 high-tech operation trapped inside a regulatory agency. The FAA is bound by stultifying federal rules and sees Congress, not the traveling public, as its customer.” In fact, most similar countries have privatized their air traffic control apparatus. The International Civil Aviation Organization has advocated for countries to eliminate the conflict of interest that arises from a government that both operates AND regulates air traffic control. The FAA must also contend with a number of factors that get in the way of its ability to effectively operate the air traffic control system. Not only do they have to contend with regular budget fights in congress, Congress also gets in the way of its ability to function. For example, according to the Atlantic quote “Individual members of Congress routinely prevent the FAA from closing facilities it no longer needs—at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars a year—and opening new ones it does need. Recently, Oklahoma lawmakers blocked legislation to authorize a second training academy for controllers for fear that it would pose a threat to the existing academy in Oklahoma City.”

Also, because our Congress is bought out by monied interests, lobbying has powerful sway over how the FAA runs. For example, private pilots and corporate jet owners get to use the air traffic control system almost for free, so any moves by Congress to try to corporatize air traffic control, which would shift the cost to the entities using the system, has been met with backlash. This happened all the way back in 1995 when a bill to transfer air traffic control to a nonprofit government corporation was squashed by that lobbying group. And it happened again in 2018 during Trump’s first term. Again, because monied interests want to keep us footing the bill for air traffic control while billionaires in private jets pay next to nothing to use the air traffic control system that we pay for, which is keeping our system in the 1900s while everywhere else they have modernized.

For example, in Canada they switched to a privatized air traffic control model back in 1996. Today, Nav Canada is handling significantly more traffic with a smaller staff than they had back in 1996. According to The Atlantic, quote “Scott McCartney, who wrote The Wall Street Journal’s long-running “Middle Seat” column, observed in 2016 that flying south over the U.S.-Canadian border “is like time travel for pilots”—you “leave a modern air-traffic control system run by a company and enter one run by the government struggling to catch up.””

As the Atlantic concludes: “As regrettable as it is, the crisis facing our nation’s ATC system gives the Trump administration political leverage. The current proposal squanders that leverage, promising the aviation sector tens of billions of taxpayer dollars with no accompanying reform of the deeply flawed ATC-governance structure—reform that would have the support of all but a few of the aviation leaders that surrounded Duffy [at his] May 8 [press conference]. In the end, the promise of a sizable investment in ATC may be necessary to get a political deal. But without the quid pro quo of structural reform, more funding won’t solve the underlying crisis.”

However, there are many critics of the idea of privatizing the air traffic control system as well. I am deeply skeptical of a completely privatized ATC system because corporations don’t give two fucks whether we live or die so long as the money keeps flowing in, which is why a lot of governments create a non for profit entity of some sort to manage air traffic, while maintaining strict safety regulations over that entity. However even the best scheme for corporatizing our air traffic control will likely fall short under a regime that is trying to roll back as many regulations as possible. There are two parts to make that deal work: corporatization of the ATC AND strict government regulation of the newly corporatized entity. Without both, the system will continue to be inadequate. On top of that, critics of privatization argue that other countries that have privatized, like Canada, the UK, and Australia have comparatively simpler operations than we need in the US and still experience chronic delays. On top of that, the International Civil Aviation Organization lowered Canada’s flight safety grade in 2023, and Canada also suffers from a shortage of air traffic controllers. The aviation industry has generally cooled on the idea of privatization in the US. A letter signed by major industry groups back in February opposed privatization, saying it would distract from moving forward with upgrades to the air traffic control system.

Ever since Reagan, every administration has promised in some capacity to improve the FAA, and yet here we are. I’m skeptical that this latest push, despite lofty promises, will do much to get us beyond our floppy era. However, perhaps the latest issues have brought our system enough to the forefront that there is enough public interest in improving the system that we may actually see some movement towards modernization.

But, like I said at the beginning, air travel continues to be the safest mode of transportation, even in the US. I don’t think you should be canceling air travel at this point. The people behind the scenes who know how the sausage is made, so to speak, still fly here. Despite this feeling rather small in the grand scheme of all the horrors currently happening, I think this could be a rare opportunity for bipartisan support of an issue, because we’re all stripped kind of bare when we’re shot into the skies and reliant on a small group of people to keep us alive up there.

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And if you liked this episode, you’ll like the one from Monday about how the Trump regime is dismantling democratic voting in this country!

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