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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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…
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.
This is great to read as I prepare for another trip my company need’s me to go in.
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 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.
If only DEI was abolished, then these planes should never have crashed
/S
https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/data/Pages/monthly-dashboard.aspx
Media is once again the enemy. Crashes happen. They are just getting more clicks right now so they are getting reported more.
The issue with your stats is it includes non commercial flights, but most people will only hear/care about commercial airline crashes, and 2025 has had a rough start - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_accidents_and_incidents_involving_commercial_aircraft_in_the_United_States
To be fair though, the article is more about people’s trust in air travel given the news, not saying that it’s actually less safe.
Fair point. Still the medias fault for the decrease of trust imo
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.
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.
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…
Everyone dies.
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.
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%.
Glad I don’t have a job that requires a lot of travel anymore. There ain’t no way.
I fly Sunday. I’m not worried.
