Pilot error played a role in the majority of high-profile plane crashes and close calls in the last few weeks, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Thursday as he called for pilots to face serious consequences when they disregard air traffic controllers, NBC News reported.
Duffy said in an interview that pilots should lose their licenses if they do not follow instructions from air traffic controllers, which is what he said appeared to happen in the latest near-collision Tuesday between a private jet and a Southwest Airlines plane in Chicago. No one was injured.
“A consequence-free space where you make errors, serious errors, and you don’t pay any kind of price for it, something’s wrong with that,” Duffy said. “And maybe this is the way we get pilots to start paying attention again and following the direction of air traffic controllers.”
Duffy was trying to calm fears that the skies are increasingly unsafe after a series of deadly aircraft crashes and near-collisions over the past few weeks, starting with the midair collision of a helicopter and a passenger jet landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, D.C., which killed 67 people.
An NBC News analysis of federal data shows the incidents and deaths on flights have not been rising compared with previous years.
In fact, the number of collisions involving any aircraft, including helicopters, small planes and hot air balloons, that caused at least one death has dropped in the United States in the last few years, the analysis shows. Last year, there were 179 incidents, the fewest in the past 25 years.
The number of deaths aboard aircraft in the United States is also on the decline. There were 302 deaths last year, compared with 308 in 2023, 336 in 2022, 353 in 2021 and 332 in 2020, according to the analysis.
Still, the string of crashes has sparked fear and unease among air travelers.
Frenchi Jones, 44, who lives in Richmond, Virginia, said she is strongly considering canceling her coming flight to Huntsville, Alabama. “I’ve become increasingly anxious and nervous,” she said.
BranDee Hopgood, 42, a frequent traveler who lives in Dallas, has already canceled her American Airlines flight to the Dominican Republic and said she does not plan to get on a plane for at least another year.
“I live for the next trip, but something is missing the mark. I’m not understanding how this is happening,” she said. “I’m staying put and I’m putting a pause on recreational travel.”
Jeff Guzzetti, a former investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, said that he does not see a common thread between the recent plane collisions and that it is still safe to fly.
“The sky is not falling,” he said. “However, I do understand the public’s nervousness about aviation, and I think that’s because of the heightened sensitivity of this very rare state of unfortunate accidents.”
In Chicago, Southwest Flight 2504 was about to land at Midway International Airport when it suddenly ascended to avoid a Flexjet aircraft crossing its path on the runway, video shows. The Federal Aviation Administration said the jet entered the runway without authorization, prompting the Southwest crew to initiate a “go-around” to avoid a collision.
The flight eventually landed safely at Midway, the airline said. But Duffy said the incident “could have been catastrophic.”
“If air traffic control is telling you to stop and you roll across the runway,” he said, “thank God you have an airliner pilot paying attention.”
In an interview Wednesday with “Fox & Friends,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy blamed the pilots of the Flexjet aircraft.
Delta Air Lines is offering passengers who were on the Toronto-bound flight that crash-landed and flipped upside-down $30,000 each.
“It appears this was a failure of the flight crew from Flexjet to listen and abide by the instructions of air traffic control,” Homendy said.
A Flexjet spokesperson said in a statement that it was “premature” for the NTSB to assign blame.
“We do not comment or speculate about any aspect of a safety investigation, especially in these very early stages, just as we expect all other professional organizations and agencies will do,” the statement said. “Flexjet adheres to the highest safety standards, and we are conducting a thorough investigation. Any action to rectify and ensure the highest safety standards will be taken.”
The close call in Chicago comes after a series of aviation accidents, some of them fatal.
On Jan. 29, an Army helicopter and a commercial airplane collided in midair near Washington, killing all 67 passengers in both aircraft, in the deadliest U.S. air crash in almost a quarter-century.
A small plane crashed in Alaska this month, killing all 10 people onboard, officials said. And a Delta plane flipped upside down in a fiery crash landing at a Toronto airport, injuring 21 people.
Duffy said Thursday that “there’s some pilot error at play in each of these incidents.”
The incidents, he said, have put a renewed focus on safety and system improvements.
Duffy, speaking from the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City, where prospective air traffic controllers are trained, announced a plan to “supercharge” the hiring of air traffic controllers from Feb. 27 through March 17 and boost starting salaries by 30% for candidates who go to the academy.
Duffy noted that a billion people fly in the United States annually on 35 million flights with very few incidents.
Crashes happen, he said, but “there’s just a lot more attention paid to it right now.”
Jay Blackman and Joe Murphy contributed.
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