Perhaps in an effort to discredit Donald Trump’s Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, the media has been fixated on reporting on plane crashes ever since the tragic January 29 Potomac River mid-air collision that killed 67.
And thanks to the constant coverage, it does certainly feel like plane crashes are more common than ever. Confidence in air travel has since taken a dip, with 64% saying they felt “very safe” in the statistically safest form of travel, down from 71% last year.
Many of the crashes reported on are the type of crashes that couldn’t even possibly (or logically) be affected by recent policy changes, or in the recent case of the Delta plane that went belly up while landing at Toronto Pearson, were caused by obvious pilot error (and how was U.S. policy supposed to impact procedure at a Toronto airport anyway?).
Well, the numbers are out - and despite the media hysteria, January was the safest month for travel since 1982 (by number of crashes), according to the National Transportation Safety Board. It could very well be the safest month in history, it's just that the NTSB's data only goes back to 1982.
Of course, January wasn't a full month of Trump in office. So what about February, as the month comes to a close? There have been 46 crashes in February, for an average of 1.84 a day as of the today. Adding the same average for the remaining four days in the month (counting today as a full today) to the total gives a projected 53 crashes. Again, this would be the lowest number of crashes in the history of NTSB data - which you can see for yourself here.
In other words, the media really just was reporting on crashes that they wouldn’t have before.
Why do you think that is?Matt Palumbo is the author of The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros
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