LOS ALAMITOS, Calif. — In the last two weeks, there have been three major plane incidents in the United States; an emotional rollercoaster for many worldwide. On Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025 a U.S. Army helicopter and an American Eagle flight crashed in a mid-air collision and plunged into the Potomac River in Washington D.C., killing 67 people. On Friday, Jan. 31, 2025 a Jet Rescue Air Ambulance (Medical Plane) crashed a few minutes after takeoff in Pennsylvania leaving seven dead and 19 injured. Most recently, on Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025, a Bering Air flight, carrying nine passengers and the pilot, crashed en route to Nome, Alaska.
The New York Times reported that the American Eagle Flight, carrying 60 passengers and four crew members, collided with a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter with a three-person crew on a military training flight near Reagan National Airport in Washington D.C., killing a total of 67 occupants. Both the plane and the helicopter fell into the Potomac River just after the collision. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the plane was scheduled to land on runway 33 at Reagan National Airport. Dashcam footage of the crash, provided by The New York Times, revealed the exact moment of impact being 8:48 p.m.
Americans living on the East coast thought they had seen enough. After a devastating mid-air collision, surely there couldn’t possibly be another accident. However, not even 48 hours later, another catastrophe occurred on Jan. 31, 2025.
An article published by APNews stated a medical transport jet crashed near a Philadelphia neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Multiple witnesses reported seeing a massive fireball as bright as the sun, and some also reported seeing the plane nose-diving straight into the ground. The Learjet 55, operated by Jet Rescue Air Ambulance, disappeared from the radar after taking off from Northeast Philadelphia Airport at around 6:06 p.m. This horrific accident was also captured on video via a Ring camera as seen in this YouTube Short, uploaded by LiveNOW from Fox. The six passengers on board the plane were from Mexico; the child on board was previously treated in Philadelphia for a life-threatening condition, before being transported back home, the destination being Tijuana, Mexico.
On Feb. 6, 2025, a Cessna 208B crashed in the icy Bering Sea on its way to Nome, Alaska with 10 people on board, according to APNews. The small commuter plane vanished off of radars on Thursday afternoon; the wreckage was cleaned up on Saturday along with the recovery of the 10 bodies inside. This is one of the deadliest airline disasters in the state of Alaska in 25 years, after Alaska Airlines flight 261 on Jan. 31, 2000, where a plane plunged into the Pacific Ocean after a failure in the horizontal stabilizer on the aircraft due to poor maintenance. According to officials, the Cessna Caravan vanished off the radar about an hour after takeoff from Unalakleet, Alaska, 30 miles southeast of its destination of Nome.
“The current state of aircraft mishaps since the year’s beginning is alarming,” said Hiram Maldonado, a pilot in training under the Science of Aviation at Liberty University in Virginia.
In an interview, Maldonado discussed how improved human intervention and attention can help prevent any more of these accidents.
“From routine maintenance and pre-flight inspections, to pilot decision-making and air traffic control, human oversight is already crucial to aviation safety,” Maldonado said.
He talked about different examples that could lead to disaster including mechanical malfunctions, craft or pilot error and problems with air traffic control (ATC). For mechanical malfunctions, he mentioned how stricter inspections and improved attention to detail could prevent an accident. Crew member fatigue, poor training or miscommunication could also lead to pilot error. Problems with ATC can include inadequate personnel, navigational errors or misunderstandings between pilots and controllers. In addition to how human error can contribute to accidents, Maldonado brought up how other external factors including weather, bird strikes and other miscellaneous factors can also play a big part in causing an accident.
Over the last couple of decades, aircraft safety has only gone up, with new safety features being introduced all the time in different types of aircraft. This series of tragic incidents, with the loss of so many lives over errors that might have been avoidable, has left many thinking twice about flying. Nonetheless, both airlines and aircraft manufacturers are taking information and data from these accidents and using them to make their services and planes, respectively, safer. Hopefully as time goes on, these accidents will not continue to be a trend in the future of air travel.
