After the D.C. plane crash, how safe is air travel in Minnesota, the U.S. and the world?

An American Airlines regional jet collided with a Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River, killing 67 people. A private medical jet crashed in Philadelphia, with 7 lives lost.

Closer to home, a Delta Air Lines flight to Amsterdam returned to MSP for an emergency landing on Sunday due to a mechanical issue, with no one hurt.

And that was just the last week in aviation.

But even in the wake of these incidents, how dangerous is flying, really? Is this part of a new trend? And what is the deal with air traffic controllers?

Let's break it down with data and facts — and a little commentary.

How unusual was the D.C. crash?

It's important to remember that the incident last week at Washington, D.C.'s Reagan National Airport was highly unusual for any U.S. airline — if not incredibly rare.

Before that, the last U.S. commercial airline crash was in February 2009, when a Continental turboprop plane crashed near Buffalo, N.Y., killing 50. The intervening 16 years sometimes felt like a golden age of U.S. air safety. There was exactly one U.S. airline fatality in all that time, caused when a Southwest 737 engine exploded midair in 2018.

And while our fading memories of the 1970s to the 1990s might include quite a few news stories of large-scale aviation tragedies, the last high-casualty accident in the U.S. was back in 2001: the American Airlines Airbus crash in Queens that killed 265, just two months after 9/11.

Putting it all in perspective, the skies have been remarkably peaceful in this century. And by the way, Joe Biden was the first president since Calvin Coolidge to have no domestic airline crash fatalities on his watch.

But what are the odds of being in an accident?

For the big picture, we can look to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which issues its annual Air Safety Report for global aviation. The 2024 report hasn't come out yet, but last year the IATA called 2023 the "safest year for flying by several parameters."

"At this level of safety, on average a person would have to travel by air every day for 103,239 years to experience a fatal accident," the IATA said in the 2023 report.

Meanwhile, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study from August 2024 claims that air travel has gotten roughly twice as safe each decade since the 1960s, thanks to advances in technology and training and work by U.S. agencies. "The risk of a fatality from commercial air travel was 1 per every 13.7 million passenger boardings globally in the 2018-2022 period," the study finds.

How does that compare to traffic deaths?

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 29,135 people died in motor vehicle crashes in the first nine months of 2024. That works out to about 106 fatalities per day — so on the very day of the D.C. disaster, far more people likely died on U.S. roads.

It's a cliche, but true: The most dangerous part of a flight is the drive to the airport. (Personally, I've had some frightening airport Ubers.) In fact, if you really want to ensure you'll live to see tomorrow, you might want to get on a plane right now.

How about air traffic controllers in Minnesota?

It's no secret that the FAA has a national air traffic controller shortage, which may have contributed to the D.C. collision. ATC staffing is also a factor in an alarming increase in runway near-misses, which reached a recent high in 2023.

Nationally, controller staffing is only at about 72% of the FAA's target. Whereas Reagan National had a 2024 target of 28 air traffic controllers, only 19 were on board as of September 2023.

One silver lining: Recent data shows that the shortages may not be so bad in Minnesota, and we may even be fully staffed in places.

According to the FAA's Air Traffic Controller Workforce Plan's most recent numbers for September 2023, the Minneapolis Tower at MSP airport had the same target of 28 controllers, but employed 30. That's 107% of the FAA's goal.

Other large ATC facilities in Minnesota tell a similar story. The big regional Minneapolis Air Route Traffic Control Center, in Farmington, had 215 controllers out of a goal of 217, or 99%, according to the report. And the Minneapolis Terminal Radar Approach Control center, which oversees the airspace around MSP, had 47 controllers, or 107% of the goal of 44.

Staffing was a little slimmer at some of Minnesota's smaller airports, according to the FAA. Duluth International Airport had 14 controllers out of a goal of 18, or 78%. And Rochester International Airport listed 11 out of 14, or 79%.

But is the D.C. tragedy part of a systemic problem?

It's impossible to say, especially before the National Transportation Safety Board completes its investigation into the crash. The NTSB said it would release a preliminary report within 30 days.

For now, the best guess is the Potomac tragedy was a standalone incident. If something similar were to occur in the near future, it would be cause for further concern and action. For example, after two similar Boeing 737 MAX crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia in 2018-2019, there was a worldwide, two-year grounding of the model.

What about the 737 MAX, anyway?

After those two major international crashes in which 346 people died, Boeing's newer 737 MAX was rightfully thrust into the center of a safety scandal. After Boeing corrected flaws in the MAX's flight control system, the model returned to the skies by late 2020.

Then in January 2024, the MAX struck again, when the plug door on an Alaska Airlines MAX 9 blew out mid-flight. Miraculously, no one was killed, but the most scandalous aspect of the story may be that Alaska Airlines had previously barred the very same aircraft from taking long overseas flights. All 737 MAX 9 planes with door plugs were again grounded until they were confirmed to be safe.

If you're skeptical as I am, you might still view the 737 MAX with at least one cocked eyebrow. I have even considered personally boycotting the MAX due to all the drama — an easy call for a Minnesotan because Delta and Sun Country don't use the model (at least not yet).

Nevertheless, I have flown on a MAX a few times since 2021 — with Icelandair, United and American — and lived to tell the tale.