By Thomas Black / Bloomberg Opinion
With a spate of air accidents in the headlines, the obvious question looms: Are the skies safe?
The short answer is yes. The numbers clearly show that taking a commercial flight is safer than traveling on trains or driving vehicles, which are involved in accidents that kill about 40,000 people a year on U.S. roadways and injure more than 2 million. The long answer is still yes, with an asterisk. With the number of passengers increasing and the air traffic management systems aging, an effort to modernize the system — one that is already mapped out and underway — needs to be accelerated both by making the Federal Aviation Administration more efficient on procurement and project bids and by giving the agency more predictable funding, at least for its modernization goals.
The nerves around flying are understandable. The tragic collision of an airliner with a military helicopter at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Jan. 29 was followed by the crashes of a turboprop passenger flight in Alaska and a private jet in a Philadelphia neighborhood. Then on Feb. 17, a Delta Air Lines regional jet flipped upside down upon landing at Toronto Pearson Airport in Canada; luckily no one was killed, but the images were still harrowing.
Not surprisingly, the interest around plane crashes and near misses hit a zenith, and every incident was highlighted in the news. Still, many air accidents involve general aviation and on-demand charter aircraft on which the vast majority of flyers will never set foot. The number of fatal U.S. commercial airline crashes in 2024 was zero, and that had been the tally since 2009. That’s why the accident in Alaska and especially the tragedy at Reagan National should be setting off alarm bells for lawmakers and federal officials.
The FAA requires predictable funding and should be exhorted to accelerate the modernization of air traffic management, a plan known as Next Generation Air Transportation System, or NextGen.This is a bipartisan effort to improve safety with no room for politics. It didn’t help that President Trump blamed FAA diversity efforts for the crash at Reagan National even before the wreckage was pulled out of the Potomac. Democratic legislators haven’t helped with their accusations that job cuts imposed by the Department of Government Efficiency at the FAA have undercut its safety mission.
The reality is DOGE took a light touch at the FAA compared with other agencies. A few hundred recently hired employees were dismissed, but none were air traffic controllers. It’s a good sign that President Trump’s pick for acting FAA administrator, Chris Rocheleau, is an Air Force veteran with two decades of experience at the FAA. His last role was chief operating officer of the National Business Aviation Association, so he knows the industry from multiple angles.
There’s agreement on the need to hire more air traffic controllers, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy pledged to do so. People should be shocked that air traffic controllers often are required to work six-day, 60-hour workweeks at this high-stress job. This is because the number of fully certified air traffic controllers dropped to 10,733 last year from 11,753 in 2012.
An immediate measure to bolster safety at the busiest airports would be to reduce helicopter and general-aviation traffic. Exceptions could be made for medical emergencies and even for some VIPs. Reagan National is now the safest it has been in years because the FAA curbed helicopter traffic after the fatal accident.
The long-term safety improvements involve pushing the whole aviation industry more into the digital, automated world we live in. This isn’t easy because the system handles more than 45,000 flights a day, meaning it can’t be shut down, and it can’t fail.
The FAA has been chipping away at this modernization, but it’s moving too slowly and is falling behind as air traffic continues to grow.
Of the 138 air traffic control systems in use, the FAA considers more than a third as unsustainable and said another 39 percent were potentially unsustainable, according to the Government Accountability Office. Some of these systems still use floppy discs, experts said during testimony at a House Subcommittee on Aviation hearing on March 4.
The agency is stuck in a fix-or-fail mode on its systems in which 92 percent of the $3 billion budget for facilities and equipment goes for maintaining the creaky system and only 8 percent for upgrades. The FAA resorts to cannibalizing out-of-service equipment for parts because it’s so outdated that it’s difficult to obtain replacement parts.
The FAA is funded mostly by users — passengers and airlines — through taxes on airfares and fuel that are collected by the Airport and Airway Trust Fund. Congress must reauthorize the fund every five years, a messy process that adds drama. The fund also doesn’t collect enough to cover the agency’s budget, putting it at the mercy of Congress to provide it with supplemental funding. This budget uncertainty is a headwind for modernization.
At the same time, the FAA’s procurement process needs an overhaul to speed up projects. The GAO said planned investments to address the most antiquated systems were on track to take six to 10 years. There must be a way to speed this up while remaining safe.
The need to improve air safety to prevent airliner accidents and to reduce near misses is something on which everyone can agree. These recent tragic accidents should be a catalyst for action that has been deferred for years.
Thomas Black is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist writing about the industrial and transportation sectors. He was previously a Bloomberg News reporter covering logistics, manufacturing and private aviation. ©2025 Bloomberg L.P., bloomberg.com/opinion
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