Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Over the last few months, high profile air travel accidents
Speaker 2: and incidents across North America have captured public attention. They've
Speaker 2: also captured the attention of Bloomberg's Global Aviation editor, Benedict Cammell.
Speaker 3: The big one was Reagan Airport in DC. That was
Speaker 3: the mid ad collision between a helicopter and the regional aircraft.
Speaker 1: Breaking news out of Washington, DC, where a commercial airliner
Speaker 1: has collided with a helicopter in midair while on approach
Speaker 1: to Reagan National Airport.
Speaker 3: Stands out for a number of reasons. You know, is
Speaker 3: in the capital, a couple of miles away from the
Speaker 3: White House, of very congested ass space. Tragically, a lot
Speaker 3: of lives lost. More than sixty people died in that.
Speaker 2: A few weeks after that, a Delta flight that departed
Speaker 2: from the Minneapolis Saint Paul International Airport crashed in Toronto again.
Speaker 3: A regional aircraft that crash landed, skidded along the runway
Speaker 3: and then practically catwheeled, losing one wing and landing bizarrely
Speaker 3: on its roof.
Speaker 1: It's landing gear appearing to collapse, the right wing, striking
Speaker 1: the ground. Sparking flames, the plane flipping onto its back,
Speaker 1: a cloud of black smoke rising into the air.
Speaker 3: Miraculously, nobody died in that incident. People managed to clamber
Speaker 3: out of the aircraft, out of the destroyed hull essentially,
Speaker 3: and an unwalked to safety. So two really scary and
Speaker 3: tragic but also very remarkable incidents.
Speaker 2: And they've come at the end of one of the
Speaker 2: safest periods for air travel in US history. But it's
Speaker 2: not just those two crashes. There's been a string of
Speaker 2: other incidents. The cabin of a Delta flight filling with haze,
Speaker 2: a near miss between an airliner and a private jet
Speaker 2: on a runway in Chicago, an Asiana flight coming in
Speaker 2: too low in San Francisco. It all raises a question
Speaker 2: what is going on with American air travel?
Speaker 3: One thing that has become almost a common feature of
Speaker 3: these accidents. They are almost always these days, there's footage
Speaker 3: of them. Whereas previously you might have read and heard
Speaker 3: about them days later, they're instantly in the social media loop.
Speaker 3: These days, everyone looks at them, everyone is really transfixed
Speaker 3: by what's going on, and that probably has contributed to
Speaker 3: a sense of unease.
Speaker 2: I'm David Gerret, And this is the big take from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News today on the show, what's behind the recent
Speaker 2: flurry of airline incidents and is their cause for concern?
Speaker 2: This recent spate of tragic and terrifying air safety incidents
Speaker 2: has made many travelers worried. I asked Bloomberg's Benedict Cammell
Speaker 2: to put them in context. It does seem like these
Speaker 2: last few weeks stand out that there have been more
Speaker 2: air safety incidents than usual? Am I right? In my
Speaker 2: read of that does feel that way.
Speaker 3: That's certainly how people would see it. And judging by
Speaker 3: the question I'm being asked by friends by colleagues, is
Speaker 3: it still safe to fly? That certainly is a sense
Speaker 3: that's crept intoto the public perception.
Speaker 2: Friends have been asking you about this. I've heard from
Speaker 2: friends who are more apprehensive, more nervous about flying. Did
Speaker 2: the day to bear out those anecdotal pieces of evidence?
Speaker 2: Do we send sense of broader trend in public opinion
Speaker 2: that people are more fearful of flying and light of
Speaker 2: what's been happening.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's certainly the case, and it's something that really
Speaker 3: we started seeing, probably in a more pronounced way since
Speaker 3: the beginning of last year, if you remember, there was
Speaker 3: that eerie accident on the Boeing seven three seven from
Speaker 3: Alaska Airlines where that door plug blew out.
Speaker 4: Investigators are increasingly focused on the four powerful bolts that
Speaker 4: should have kept the door panel from flying off this
Speaker 4: seven thirty seven Max nine.
Speaker 3: That was really such a publicized and public event that
Speaker 3: a lot of people started asking what is going on?
Speaker 3: Can you imagine me sitting on that plane and suddenly
Speaker 3: sort of the door bursting out in mid flight? That
Speaker 3: I think really hit home for a lot of people.
Speaker 3: And in the weeks after that, we had a of incidents,
Speaker 3: none of them fatal, none of them dramatic, but every
Speaker 3: time something happens, every time there was a near incursion
Speaker 3: on a runway, every time there was what we call
Speaker 3: a go around, ie a plane trying to land but
Speaker 3: then taking off again because something's wrong, a wheel falling off,
Speaker 3: something with the engine. Things that previously people really wouldn't
Speaker 3: have cared that much about that became far more pronounced.
Speaker 1: United Airlines faces more questions this morning after a wheel
Speaker 1: fell off a Boying seven fifty.
Speaker 4: Seven, but Monday's incident marks the second time a wheel
Speaker 4: has fallen off a United plane during takeoff. In the
Speaker 4: last four months.
Speaker 2: Zach, we're having more and more of these incidents.
Speaker 3: You don't want to hear breeze, so you almost enter
Speaker 3: a bit of a so should say, sort of echo chamber,
Speaker 3: whereby every additional incident gets added to the list and
Speaker 3: people get more and more worried. If you look at
Speaker 3: the data versus sort of the public sentiment out there,
Speaker 3: the two don't really move in tandem.
Speaker 2: When it comes to aviation incidents. I imagine there's a
Speaker 2: spectrum and at one end you have meteor collision that
Speaker 2: we sign in Washington. On the other end, I guess
Speaker 2: perhaps some issues with taxiing something like that.
Speaker 3: So the most common is what we call the tail strike,
Speaker 3: so it's basically the tail of the aircraft striking the runway.
Speaker 3: We have runway excursions, which means the plane basically rolling
Speaker 3: over the runway into a grass field field or something
Speaker 3: like that. And they're usually not tragic. I mean, they happen,
Speaker 3: they damage a plane more often than not. Planes might
Speaker 3: touch each other on the tarmac. They try and come
Speaker 3: out of their parking position and they smack into another
Speaker 3: aircraft or that, you know, a truck catering truck or
Speaker 3: whatever might smash into an aircraft. These things happen more
Speaker 3: often that you think, but they don't get publicized that much. Yeah,
Speaker 3: people don't really read about them because it's sort of
Speaker 3: part of the course. It's something that just happens, and
Speaker 3: you know, people move on. It's only when it's dramatic,
Speaker 3: when it's tragic, when there are fatalities involved, that's really
Speaker 3: when people take note. They were about nine serious run
Speaker 3: way incursion, so sort of two aircraft coming close to
Speaker 3: one another in twenty twenty four. There were twenty four
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty fIF so that gives you a sense.
Speaker 3: This is data for the US that gives you a
Speaker 3: sense of just how rare this is. So nine over
Speaker 3: the course of year is really not very many if
Speaker 3: you again think about the number of movements that we have.
Speaker 2: I was struck reading about that mid air collision between
Speaker 2: the American Airlines flight and the military helicopter in Washington
Speaker 2: that we hadn't had a fatal air crash in the
Speaker 2: US since two thousand and nine. What accounts for that
Speaker 2: rather long period fifteen plus years of safety.
Speaker 3: Well, it's a number of things. Pilot training has become
Speaker 3: very good. The aircraft generally have become extremely reliable. Kit
Speaker 3: Whenever we do have accidents these days, most of the
Speaker 3: time this is not because of faulty equipment. Most of
Speaker 3: the time there's some kind of pilot or navigation error involved,
Speaker 3: So that has definitely improved. The other thing is we,
Speaker 3: you know, point out the obvious. We live in a
Speaker 3: fairly safe part of the world, don't live in a
Speaker 3: conflict zone. And also when something does go wrong, there's
Speaker 3: an extremely diligent process in place to make sure, you know,
Speaker 3: that everyone understands what caused this, what can be learned
Speaker 3: from it, and how to prevent this from happening again.
Speaker 2: Coming up, how air travel safety in the US compares
Speaker 2: to the rest of the world. The challenge is ahead
Speaker 2: for American aviation and what this means for flyers right now,
Speaker 2: I asked Bloomberg's Benedict Cambell how the US airspace system
Speaker 2: compares to other parts of the world.
Speaker 3: I mean, it is incredibly congested, but it's controlled, you know, so,
Speaker 3: but there are obviously parts of the system that at
Speaker 3: times look to be overwhelmed, and it's in some ways
Speaker 3: also slightly messy, you know, as we saw with the
Speaker 3: helicopter and aircraft collision, you sort of had two different
Speaker 3: species of aircraft in the same airspace, and in areas
Speaker 3: like DC or in other parts of the world where
Speaker 3: you have these sort of different forms of air transport
Speaker 3: colliding as it were, or sort of moving in tandem,
Speaker 3: that can be difficult to navigate. And they did actually
Speaker 3: make some changes after that collision to say, okay, we
Speaker 3: want helicopters to be out of certain zones, we want
Speaker 3: to suspend helicopter movements, and so on, so that they
Speaker 3: instantly look at these things and think about, okay, what
Speaker 3: can we do differently. Private jets another should we say,
Speaker 3: species of aircraft that have really grown in the number
Speaker 3: of usage over the last couple of years really since
Speaker 3: COVID and suffice it to say private jets and commercial jets.
Speaker 3: They might not always move sort of in the same
Speaker 3: kind of way. The person navigating the private jet might
Speaker 3: have a different sort of training background. So there are
Speaker 3: these specificities in the industry, and that's not even talking
Speaker 3: about drones and maybe the future of electric flying. So
Speaker 3: the complexity of the airspace has become such that navigating
Speaker 3: through these different types of aircraft in the sky is
Speaker 3: already complicated and will probably become more complicated still.
Speaker 2: We've heard in recent weeks about the technology underpinning air
Speaker 2: safety air traffic control here in the US, and a
Speaker 2: lot about the insuffient amount of air traffic controllers in
Speaker 2: the US. How unique are those problems? When you look
Speaker 2: at at air travel around the.
Speaker 3: World, it is fair to say that in most countries
Speaker 3: air traffic control systems have sort of evolved and grown
Speaker 3: over the years and might not always be state of
Speaker 3: the art. They might look a little creaky in some ways.
Speaker 3: You know, the computer systems might not be up to scratch.
Speaker 3: They are slow moving, they don't update that quickly. But
Speaker 3: by and larger they work. You know, it's a system
Speaker 3: that's also built on redundancy, that is built on let's
Speaker 3: make sure it works. It might not be state of
Speaker 3: the art, but it's safe. You know, if it's not broken,
Speaker 3: don't fix it. That's sort of the attitude. So there
Speaker 3: are obviously attempts to upgrade these. There's a lot of money.
Speaker 3: There are new players coming in. We've heard from Elon Musk,
Speaker 3: you know, Donald Trump himself said we have an old,
Speaker 3: broken system. We have the new transport Secretary Sean Duffy's
Speaker 3: saying we need to rethink the national airspace and he
Speaker 3: said that he's going to plug Doge, you know, Elon
Speaker 3: Musk's group into the system. So there are attempts out there,
Speaker 3: some of them probably more audacious than others to upgrade
Speaker 3: the system. But what you see is, you know, this
Speaker 3: isn't just a quick software update. You want to make
Speaker 3: sure it works and it works reliably. You have to
Speaker 3: be absolutely sure. You need the redundancy in the system
Speaker 3: and having something that might be maybe not quite state
Speaker 3: of the art, but reliable sometimes it is better than saying, okay,
Speaker 3: let's try out something new and you know, let's hope
Speaker 3: for the best. So there is an attempt to upgrade
Speaker 3: the system, but how much time are you willing to
Speaker 3: sacrifice for that? Who's in charge of this? Those are
Speaker 3: some of the questions that are being asked right now.
Speaker 2: When it comes to prusonnel to those zero traffic controllers
Speaker 2: and unders stand and many of them are working ten
Speaker 2: hour days, six day weeks. How sustainable is then? Why
Speaker 2: has it been so difficult to hire a sufficient amount
Speaker 2: of air traffic controllers in the US.
Speaker 3: This has been an issue for many years, but it
Speaker 3: became more pronounced during the pandemic when a lot of
Speaker 3: people left the industry and left the FAA, the body
Speaker 3: that oversees aviation in the US, the regulator, and we
Speaker 3: have had a drain of air traffic controllers. They've retired
Speaker 3: very often and not been replaced in sufficient numbers. There
Speaker 3: was an attempt under the Biden administration to really go
Speaker 3: out to universities, go out to colleges, try and recruit
Speaker 3: more people, but we're still far short of where they
Speaker 3: should be. It's not seen as a particularly attractive line
Speaker 3: of work. I don't know what the pay is, but
Speaker 3: I imagine it's not astronomical. So there are people out there
Speaker 3: who think, well, why should I go into this field?
Speaker 3: And really attracting the talent has been difficult now. After
Speaker 3: the crash in DC, there was a lot of debate
Speaker 3: over have we hired the right people? Have maybe diversity
Speaker 3: efforts gone too far and attracted the wrong types of people.
Speaker 3: That was a line that was put forward by Donald
Speaker 3: Trump and Sean Duffy to some degree, others will say
Speaker 3: this is absolutely not the cause of any crash. You know,
Speaker 3: the people that do operate in these towers are highly professional.
Speaker 3: There is no shortage. When there are fewer people on staff,
Speaker 3: it's because, you know, it's a slow day of traffic.
Speaker 3: It's not because we lack the people. But the truth
Speaker 3: is there aren't still enough people out there. They could
Speaker 3: do with more. But what we're seeing right now is,
Speaker 3: you know, the government going in and actually weeding out
Speaker 3: positions and removing people, not mission critical and safety critical people,
Speaker 3: they say. But over you know, this department and others,
Speaker 3: there are people losing their jobs. And obviously that's not
Speaker 3: great for morale. If you are thinking about going into
Speaker 3: that industry, you might think twice going forward.
Speaker 2: New Benedict, I wanted to get your perspective on this
Speaker 2: because you and I are talking just a few days
Speaker 2: after report that Federal Aviation Administration workers were let go.
Speaker 2: And as you say, the government has been adamant that
Speaker 2: they aren't safety critical, but we've seen unions push back
Speaker 2: on that. How should we look at what's happened here
Speaker 2: in the context of recent events and the context of
Speaker 2: kind of the long standing difficulties that the US has
Speaker 2: faced hiring adequate staff to deal with aviation safety.
Speaker 3: Well, it certainly doesn't help, you know, if you want
Speaker 3: to attract people, you need to provide certain sort of
Speaker 3: measures that will seem attractive to them. It has to
Speaker 3: be pay, it has to be working hours, but also
Speaker 3: has to be job security. And these are people who
Speaker 3: were let go within their first year of you know,
Speaker 3: their probation. So for future generations, or people thinking about
Speaker 3: a job in somewhere like air traffic control or somewhere
Speaker 3: else in the within the FAA, be it an engineer,
Speaker 3: be it in certification, there are other fields within the FAA.
Speaker 3: They might think twice going forward because they might think, well,
Speaker 3: if I'm just going to be targeted within my first
Speaker 3: year because somebody, you know, elon ask if somebody else
Speaker 3: thinks that I'm not performing properly, then i might as
Speaker 3: well go to Amazon, or I'll go to Boeing, or
Speaker 3: I'll go to you know, somewhere else where I feel
Speaker 3: as a greater sense of job security. And after years
Speaker 3: of trying to really increase the hiring, this is probably
Speaker 3: seen as fairly counterproductive.
Speaker 2: You said you've been fielding questions from friends or maybe
Speaker 2: they've been coming to you a bit nervous about flying.
Speaker 2: What do you say to them, maybe to try to
Speaker 2: ease their nervous a bit.
Speaker 3: I say flying is safe. There's very little you can
Speaker 3: do about it one way or the other short of
Speaker 3: not getting on a plane. But think of the three
Speaker 3: million travelers in the US alone who get on a
Speaker 3: plane every day, take off and land safely. Think of
Speaker 3: the forty five thousand planes that do this. Think of
Speaker 3: the forty million aircraft that fly across the world every year,
Speaker 3: and only very very few do not get to their destination.
Speaker 3: The chances of perishing or even getting hurt on a
Speaker 3: plane are absolutely minuscule. Now, of every person that dies
Speaker 3: or gets injured on the plane, is one too many.
Speaker 3: But overall, I know I'm sounding like an industry lobbyist
Speaker 3: at this point. Yeah, But overall is still a very,
Speaker 3: very safe mode of transport.
Speaker 2: This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gerat.
Speaker 2: This episode is produced by David Fox. It was edited
Speaker 2: by Ryan Bean and Naomi Shaven, who's also our senior producer.
Speaker 2: It was fact checked by Adrian A. Tapia and mixed
Speaker 2: and sound designed by Alex Sagura. Our senior editor is
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Poncell. Our executive producer is Nicole Beemster. Boor. Sage
Speaker 2: Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. If you liked this episode,
Speaker 2: make sure to subscribe and review The Big Take wherever
Speaker 2: you listen to podcasts. It helps people find the show.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. We'll be back on Monday.