CNN
—
Near misses. Crash landings. And, of course, the tragic accidents which have claimed lives across the globe in recent weeks.
It’s little wonder that public confidence in flying has taken a tumble in recent weeks.
A poll carried out by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research in February, after the fatal DC crash of an American Airlines plane and a helicopter, showed that 64% of adults in the US believe flying is still safe, or very safe. While that’s a majority, it’s a dip from a similar poll in 2024, when 71% of adults responded positively.
The poll was taken after the DC crash, but before a Delta Air Lines plane flipped over during a crash landing at the Toronto Pearson International Airport on February 17.
For many passengers, the fact that pilots are locked behind the flight deck doors, and only appear as disembodied voices on the PA system, doesn’t make them feel any more reassured.
In turn, some pilots, it seems, are starting to anticipate passengers’ fears.
Devon Hall, a nurse from Atlanta, had boarded her flight home from Las Vegas with Delta on February 24 when the pilot emerged to speak to his passengers.
“From takeoff to touchdown, during those three hours 24 minutes, there is literally nobody more important in my life than you and the crew,” said captain Phil “Ritz” Smith. “And I will do everything I can to first get you safely to Atlanta and then as quickly as possible to Atlanta.”
He then thanked all the passengers for booking the flight that day.
Hall says that she was more anxious than usual because of the recent headlines.
“It’s hard for someone not to have more anxiety than normal in regards to flying,” she says.
But Smith’s announcement “put me in a better mindset.”
“Hearing someone say something so passionate and kind when he doesn’t didn’t have to means a lot,” she says. “It made me so happy to see that it was helping people who were struggling with flying because I had hesitancy too.”
Another nervous flyer — this journalist — can concur. Boarding a 2023 British Airways flight from London’s Heathrow to Rio de Janeiro, I mentioned to the crew that I was anxious about the 12-hour flight.
Cabin crew relayed that to the captain, who came to personally reassure me before takeoff, before returning during the flight to chat, even drawing diagrams of aerodynamics explaining why my worst fears couldn’t happen. He reframed how I felt about that flight — and flying ever since.
Amy Leversidge, general secretary of BALPA, the British pilots union, says that her members haven’t changed how they speak to passengers in recent weeks.
“Pilots are very good at that reassuring voice over the speakers… part and parcel of the role of captain is to be that trusted voice from the flight deck,” she says.
An ‘elevated sense of anxiety’
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Looking at Captain Smith’s reassuring speech, you’d think pilots are unconcerned about the recent spate of incidents.
Indeed, Patrick Smith (not related), whose website Ask the Pilot advises the flying public about all things aviation, says that the current anxiety needs to be met with a “better sense of perspective.”
“Even with this recent spate in mind, serious aviation accidents are far, far fewer and further between than they used to be,” he says. “You look at the 1960s through early 2000s, multiple major plane crashes were the norm. That’s simply not true anymore. But this perspective is lost — especially on younger people.”
Smith, who’s been a pilot since 1990 and flies for a major US airline, says that “there’s definitely an elevated sense of anxiety right now.”
“People are emailing me asking if [flying] is safe. I’ve always got letters like that but the ones recently do reflect this elevated sense of anxiety.”
For Smith, there are what he calls “stressors on the system” — especially the understaffing of US air traffic control.
“Does it mean we need to be on our guard? Sure. Does that mean the system is unsafe? No. There’s a difference between less safe and unsafe,” he says, adding that these stressors have been in place for a long time.
‘Fate is screaming at us to do something’
Not everyone is so relaxed. Captain Dennis Tajer, spokesperson for the Allied Pilots Association, a union of 16,000 American Airlines pilots, says that colleagues have been sounding the alarm for some time.
“Our pilots are reporting the same concerns as the public,” he says. “The system is under pressure.”
Since the pandemic, says Tajer, there’s been a perfect storm: an industry going from “zero to 60” as travel rebooted post-lockdown; increased demand for “revenge” travel; and mass retirements across the industry, many of which were encouraged as a way of saving money for companies while planes were grounded. The rebound situation has been “unprecedented,” he says.
Couple that with technology not being upgraded, and pressure to get planes up in the air and down again — fast — and, he says, you have a problem.
Tajer says that if pilots are even a minute late in pushing back from the gate, they are often questioned why — right when they’re concentrating on preparing to take off.
“Imagine a surgeon is about to perform open-heart surgery on your family member, and someone from the hospital runs in and says, ‘How long will you be? You’ve started a little late’?” he asks. “It’s a sacred time. It should be a sterile cockpit. From the moment you taxi out to parking at the gate, you have to be clear of distractions.”
Tajer says that there’s no malice in the questions, but that “intense commercial pressure” in the industry means that when people are distracted “it can get dangerous.”
Not just in terms of crashes. Last month, an American Airlines employee was killed at Charlotte Airport when he was hit by a tug, which tows aircraft in and out of the gates. And in 2022, a baggage worker was crushed to death at London’s Heathrow airport while offloading an Emirates jet.
“It’s a serious business, unforgiving if you don’t respect procedures and discipline,” says Tajer.
Leversidge emphasizes that take off and landing are “the two most critical parts of flying.”
“There are very strict rules and procedures in place to make sure there are two pilots able to fully concentrate on what’s going on,” she says.
Tajer says that his members have also raised concerns about the FAA, which has seen a revolving door of executives over the past few years (President Donald Trump’s new appointment, Chris Rocheleau, took office in January), and ongoing issues with planes — such as last year’s Boeing door-plug blowout and June’s revelation that another design snag in the embattled Boeing Max aircraft can see the cabin filled with smoke during a bird strike.
“We’ve said on record that fate is screaming at us to do something or it will. We’ve been seeing the indications,” he says.
However, passengers shouldn’t be afraid to fly, he is at pains to point out. “It’s okay to be concerned,” he says, but emphasizes that pilots have “got your back.”
Take the Southwest pilots at Chicago Midway airport who had to perform a go-around — aborting their landing last-minute — when they noticed another jet on the runway where they’d been cleared to land on February 25.
“They did what they were trained to do and saved lives,” says Tajer. “It’s not an unusual maneuver, it’s part of our toolbox.” But, he stresses, “You don’t want to count on that as a normal operation.”
He says that the congested skies are pushing air traffic controllers to schedule airplanes “right down to the second.”
“It’s safe out there but it’s under pressure,” he says.
Smith is less alarmed. “Pilots feel that in some ways we have to pick up everybody’s weaknesses, but that’s the way we’ve always felt. I don’t really feel [it’s more so now].”
Pilots must ‘up their game’ in the US
If it looks like the recent slew of incidents has been coming from the US, some might be tempted to wonder if things are done differently in America.
One pilot for a major international airline, who wished to remain anonymous as they are not authorized to speak on behalf of their company, said that “pilots have to up their game” when flying in the United States. The US handles certain elements of aviation differently from the rest of the world, they said.
For instance, in both the recent Southwest go-around and the DC crash, the aircraft involved were communicating with air traffic control on different radio frequencies, therefore not hearing each other.
“Nowhere else in the world does that,” they said. Elsewhere, aircraft moving onto an active runway must use the same frequency — that of the air traffic control tower, rather than ground control. That means everyone using the runway can hear everyone else scheduled to use it.
Then there’s what the pilot calls a US “obsession to make people ‘go visual’ because of air traffic control capacity.”
In other countries, landings are what they call “positively controlled” — pilots are told the speed, altitude and direction at which to approach the runway.
“I go to [the US], they’ll point me at the airport and say, ‘It’s at 12 o’clock in 10 miles, can you see it?’ And then I’m told to switch to the tower frequency and cleared to land,” they say.
They call the US approach a “shift of responsibility” allowing stretched air traffic controllers to increase capacity while each pilot takes responsibility for “terrain clearance and not bumping into other planes.” That’s similar to Tajer’s claim that pilots are being treated as the only, not the last, line of defense.
The international pilot singles out the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport as particularly challenging. “There are multiple runways pointing in the same direction, all close together. You could have [multiple] aircraft landing abreast, and they want you to go visual because they can’t maintain separation,” they say.
Sometimes, they say, international pilots instigate a go-around when they see other airplanes too close for comfort at a US airport, surprising local air traffic control.
“They’ll say, ‘Why are you going around? You can see it!’” they say. “I’ll guarantee you that there’ll have been zero visual approaches at European airports today, for example. These are the kinds of things that don’t happen anywhere else in the world.”
After the July 2013 Asiana Airlines crash at San Francisco International Airport, which took place while the airport’s Instrument Landing System glideslope (a radio navigation system) was out of service, the FAA banned foreign pilots from making visual approaches to two of its runways until the glideslope was repaired that September. A 2017 Air Canada near miss at SFO also involved a visual approach, when the pilots mistook a taxiway full of departing aircraft for the runway. Even last week, a Qantas 787 had to make a go-around as it came in to land at SFO, only to find an Emirates A380 still lumbering along the runway for take-off.
In January’s DC crash, the aircraft involved were relying on visual maneuvering at night — a technique forbidden by most European airlines.
US air traffic control also clear aircraft to land while there are still other aircraft approaching or on the runway, they say — again, in contrast to other countries where only one plane has clearance to land at any time.
In other countries, says the pilot, “I don’t get clearance from the tower until I’m number one to land and the runway is clear. In America, I could be number seven in a stream and they say ‘You’re clear to land on that runway.’ Now it’s up to you if you want to land or not. Air traffic control is negating responsibility for the airplanes in front of you… they put the onus on the pilot.
“I’m not saying it’s wrong — it’s different. You up your game [flying to the US].”
The pilot also cites America’s “liberal view on aviation” which sees light aircraft, private jets, military aircraft and commercial airliners all using the same airspace.
“I’ve been in a 747 [jumbo jet] departing behind a Piper Archer [a two- or four-seater light aircraft] at JFK,” they say. “I find it quite refreshing that they allow that, but you’d never get that anywhere else. That causes complexity.
“When you mix military traffic operating on night-vision goggles with civilian traffic with a guy in a Piper Archer who’s got 40 hours of experience, and just one air traffic controller, you can see why they get overwhelmed and put responsibility on the pilots.”
Another element particular to the US is the difference between state and federal jurisdiction. Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, for example, got its first “ramp control system,” which directs aircraft around the airport apron, in 2024. Before this, aircraft had to organize their own movements. The airport is owned by the city but operated by the Department of Aviation.
“It was a free for all,” says the pilot. “The federal Air Traffic Control would take you to the entrance of the ramp and say, ‘good luck.’ It was f***ing chaos. There were a few instances where planes went head to head and couldn’t turn around.”
The pilot is at pains to stress that none of this is a criticism of US aviation.
“It’s just a difference in procedures,” they say.
Smith agrees that some US infrastructure is outdated and that American procedures differ from the rest of the world, but says that that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
“There are procedural differences [between the US and abroad] and those would need to be looked at, but [these are] policies and procedures that have been in place for a long, long time,” he says.
“Visual approaches are very common in the US but have there been accidents attributable to that, to show our system to be less safe? I don’t see that. I think our system has to be the way it is to handle the volume of traffic we have.
“In DC there’s always been a large number of military aircraft mixed with commercial traffic, and until [the Potomac] incident it has always worked well. Sure, something went wrong, maybe needs to be done a different way, but is the system dangerous? No. Is our infrastructure as sophisticated as Europe’s? No, so let’s work on that. Is it unsafe? No.”
A House hearing on Tuesday heard that while the US has long considered itself the “gold standard” on safety, that standard might be slipping. Rep. Troy Nehls, chairman of the subcommittee on aviation, said that “we must do better.”
‘Our record is stellar — but not perfect’
So should passengers be worried?
The international pilot doesn’t think so — and says they haven’t noticed an increase of nervous flyers.
“I think [passengers] are apathetic, really,” they say, adding that in winter they always anticipate “a flurry” of incidents (such as the Delta plane that flipped over) because North American airports are more prone to bad weather and planes can often slip in the ice.
“I think every flight is a safe flight — nobody goes to work thinking any different,” they say.
They, like Tajer, use the Southwest go-around as an example of pilots on their best game.
“A go-around isn’t an emergency, it’s a normal course of events,” they say. “That’s a massive shift from the 1990s when there was a mindset of, ‘when you’re landing, you’re going to land.’ Now, it’s, ‘give me a reason to land rather than to go-around.’ That’s why it was so painless [for] the Southwest pilot. In the audio there was no panic, no surprise. They’d obviously talked about, ‘What do we do if we reject the landing?’
“It’s frightening for passengers, I get it. But from the point of view of the pilot, it’s a non-event. It’s that sensationalism that fuels a misperception of the risk of flying. It’s still the safest mode of travel by far. Incidents make the headlines because they’re so rare.”
Smith says that we need perspective. “People have completely lost track about how safe we are today compared to how we used to be,” he says. “Just because we had a serious accident in January doesn’t mean the system is falling apart.” He doesn’t see any particular “red flags,” he says.
Tajer, on the other hand, does. “Our record is stellar — it’s no longer perfect,” he admits. But he says that aviation safety is all about building structures to “trap small errors that add up and create big problems,” and warns that pilots are currently being left to do this.
Pilots are the “last line of defense, but at the moment, he says, they’re “being treated like we’re the only line of defense.”
For the international pilot, their trust in those flying the plane means they’re not worried. “I feel just as safe, if not safer,” they say. “Because we up our game when things like this happen.”
CNN’s Sara Smart contributed to this report