CNN: January Had a Record Low Number of Airplane Accidents

It may feel like we’ve had a lot of air accidents lately and some on the left are doing their best to blame every accident on President Trump.

I’m thankful that everyone in the flight incident in Toronto that took off from Minneapolis is safe, but we keep seeing these incidents day after day.

Meanwhile, Trump’s doing massive layoffs at the FAA—including safety specialists—and making our skies less and less safe.…

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) February 17, 2025

To those asking whether it matters that the plane’s destination was in Canada:

The flight took off from Minneapolis. The FAA was still responsible for inspecting the aviation equipment, and Trump just let go of FAA safety specialists. https://t.co/uCpjHtqLnd

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) February 18, 2025

The White House responded to that yesterday, calling Schumer “incredibly irresponsible.”

Karoline Leavitt just delivered a slam dunk fact-check on Chuck Schumer for blaming the Delta plane crash that took place in CANADA, under Canadian Air traffic control, on Trump.

“It’s incredibly irresponsible for Chuck Schumer to say such a thing when the investigation is still… pic.twitter.com/ke3tiWtbeJ

— George (@BehizyTweets) February 18, 2025

It’s worth noting that Schumer is hardly alone. Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan deleted a dumb tweet he posted earlier this week.

Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan deleted a social media post about recent aviation accidents after claiming to receive backlash from “MAGA and Islamophobic folks.” 

In the now-deleted post uploaded on Sunday, Feb. 16, Hasan, 45 wrote, “Make American Plane Crash Again.” His five-word response was in response to another post about two people who were killed in a plane crash at Georgia’s Covington Airport in Atlanta on Saturday, Feb. 15.

There were plenty of people making this same argument this week. But CNN takes a look at the numbers and finds January was actually a very safe month for air travel overall.

…sometimes feelings can be deceiving. A look at the statistics suggests that the skies are about as friendly as they’ve ever been…

It appears that last month there was a record low number of airplane accidents nationwide, when combining private and commercial airline flights. Most of the 62 total airplane accidents were on private flights, and that total number was 18 less than the 80 recorded in January 2024.

In fact, if the preliminary numbers hold, January 2025 will surpass the previous record for the lowest number of total accidents, with eight fewer than the prior record low of 70 from January 2012.

Ten of the accidents in January 2025 were, unfortunately, fatal, and one of those fatal incidents involved a commercial airliner. Obviously, any number above zero is too many, but 10 overall is an incredibly low number, historically speaking.

So the number of accidents was really low but unfortunately one of those accidents, the one in Washington, DC, was very deadly. That’s cause for taking a close look at how helicopters and airliners operate around that particular airport, but it’s not an indictment of the system as a whole, much less proof that Trump is making air travel unsafe.

But that’s not the impression you get from listening to Democrats who literally see the blood in the water as an opportunity to attack their opponents and spread fear.