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Front Burner Transcript for February 21, 2025

Host: Jayme Poisson

JAYME POISSON: Hi, I'm Jayme Poisson.

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

[Air traffic control radio communication clip]

JP: On Monday, shortly after two in the afternoon, a Delta Airlines flight from Minneapolis was cleared to land at Toronto Pearson International Airport.

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[Air traffic control radio communication clip]

JP: You've probably seen the video by now.

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AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER: We need crash fire rescue on the runway.

JP: The plane touched down hard, its right wing hitting the ground and sparking flames.

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AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER 1: We need emergency services, runway 2-3.

AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER 2: Yeah, we're on it.

JP: Passengers on board described a scene of metal scraping against cement as the wing was ripped off and the aircraft rolled, flipping onto its back and skidding before coming to a stop in a cloud of smoke and fire.

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FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Everything! Drop it!

[commotion of passengers exiting plane]

FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Come on!

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CRASH SURVIVOR: I was just in a plane crash. Oh my God.

JP: More than a dozen people were taken to hospital where they were treated for injuries. All four crew members and 76 passengers survived. This is just the latest in a string of high-profile crashes over the last few months, stories that have shaken travellers' confidence in air travel, leading many to ask the question, is flying as safe as we thought it was? My guest today is Lori Aratani. She's a reporter with The Washington Post who has been covering the problems plaguing the aviation industry, and she's going to walk us through what's going on with aviation safety, in particular in the United States, and whether flying is actually getting more dangerous.

[Music: Theme]

JP: Lori, hi. It's so great to have you back on the show.

LORI ARATANI: Thank you for inviting me.

JP: So we are not even three months into the year, and there have been several big crashes, in Alaska, Philadelphia, D.C., this week in Toronto. And I wonder if we could just go through a few of these incidents, starting with the one in Toronto. From what we know so far, what do people think happened?

LORI ARATANI: I think, you know, investigators always caution about coming to conclusions very quick until they've done their work. You know, they'll probably look at weather. They're going to look at the aircraft itself and see if there was an issue with the plane. They'll interview the crew and the passengers about what happened. You know, I understand they've been able to recover both black boxes, right, which will give you both the voice recording about what the pilots were saying and what they were communicating with the tower, and the data recorder that will give them an indication of, you know, the operations of the flight, where it was in the air, how it came down. Lots of experts have talked about how it looked like a regular landing until it didn't.

JP: Okay. Let's do the one in D.C. now. So this was almost a month ago. The U.S. saw its deadliest plane crash in more than two decades.

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NEWS CORRESPONDENT: ...bombshell statement, really, from the Federal Aviation Administration. PSA Airlines Bombardier CRJ700 regional jet collided in mid-air with a Sikorsky H-60 helicopter -- that's a Blackhawk -- while on approach to runway 3 3 at Reagan National Airport around 9 p.m. local time. PSA was operating Flight 5342 for American Airlines that departed Wichita, Kansas.

JP: All 67 people on board the plane and three military personnel on board the helicopter were killed. There's been a lot of theories about what might have caused the crash. I know the investigation similarly is ongoing. But what is the latest here? Do we have any more information?

LORI ARATANI: Yeah. I mean, one of the things, we're waiting -- usually our National Transportation Safety Board here in the U.S. is the lead independent agency in these crashes. So what we're waiting for right now is the preliminary report, which we expect before the end of the month. The airport that, you know... These aircraft were operating in some of the most complex and security sensitive airspace in the country. It's, it's just, it's a very small area. You've got a lot of air traffic coming in. And one of the things that investigators are looking at is whether or not the helicopter pilots, when they were conversing with the--communicating with the tower, may have been looking at the wrong plane, which may explain why. They're also looking at, you know, the equipment and the aircraft. The helicopters there are required to fly at a 200-foot altitude. It's a very crowded corridor, very tough space, particularly for the airplane, because it was going into a different runway. There are some indications that the helicopter was maybe 100 feet above where it should have been, which in that space is dangerous, right? One of the things that, you know, aviation relies on is predictability, right. You're hoping everyone is going to follow procedure and process, and that's what helps keep people safe. So they're going to look at, you know, if the helicopter was above where it should have been. Was there perhaps an issue with the instruments? Were they getting, you know, perhaps bad readings from their instruments that didn't give them accurate readings of what altitude that they were at. It was a clear night that night. You know, one of the things they're also looking at is staffing in the tower -- whether or not there was some... In general, in that tower, usually there's one position for helicopters to manage helicopter traffic, one position to handle the commercial air traffic that's going into that airport. The night of the crash, that position had been combined. You know, it was a quieter night later in the evening when perhaps there aren't as many helicopters flying. So it's, it's just not clear.

JP: Yeah. I remember in the aftermath of that really tragic crash, President Trump went on this tear about diversity, equity and inclusion policies and how they might have led to the collision.

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DONALD TRUMP: Then my administration will set the highest possible bar for aviation safety. We have to have our smartest people. It doesn't matter what they look like, how they speak, who they are. It matters intellect, talent. The word talent. You have to be talented, naturally talented geniuses.

DONALD TRUMP: The FAA's diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. That is amazing. And then it says FAA...

JP: Does that hold any water?

LORI ARATANI: You know, the standards for hiring air traffic controllers have always remained high. They have to take a test. They have to pass a physical. Psychological exams. It's a very difficult and stressful job and they want to make sure the folks that are directing air traffic in some of the busiest airspace in the world, you know, are there for the job. There was a change, and it was simply to include sort of a biographical narrative of who a person was. But the other standards didn't change. So the idea that DEI or somehow the FAA had lowered the standards for reasons of diversity just isn't true. FAA officials say they maintain the same high standards they've always had for air traffic controllers.

[music]

JP: I just want to go through a couple of the incidents that we've seen with smaller aircrafts. On Wednesday of this week, two people were killed when two planes collided in mid-air at an Arizona airport.

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REPORTER 1: One of the planes hit the ground near a runway and caught fire. The other aircraft landed safely.

JP: A commuter plane went missing off the radar earlier this month and was later found crashed in western Alaska. All ten people on board were killed.

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[Air traffic control radio communication clip]

AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER: Low altitude alert, Bering Air 445. Check your altitude immediately.

REPORTER 2: Seconds later:

AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER: Bering Air 445 to Anchorage Center. Radar contact lost.

JP: Before that, on January 31st, a medical transportation plane crashed into a Philadelphia neighbourhood, killing the six people on board and one person on the ground.

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WITNESS: But I just see the plane is getting lower and lower and lower. It nicked the house. When it nicked the house it hit a couple cars... Boom! And it-- to the plaza. And to the Dunkin' Donuts. Everywhere. I, I never seen nothing like that a day in my life.

JP: I feel like there's this idea that smaller planes aren't as safe as bigger ones. And is that accurate?

LORI ARATANI: You know, you have your sort of commercial aircraft, that would be your smaller regional jets, and your large aircraft that I think most people know about. And they have to meet very stringent standards in their operations. You know, for a smaller, what we call general aviation aircraft, you know, that's sort of a different category, and they're probably not as heavily regulated as commercial planes. You know, the pilots may be a little less experienced. That's not to say they're not great pilots. And then in the case of this crash in Arizona, you know, that was a very small airport which didn't have a control tower. So once again, you have to depend on good communication and that people are following, you know, the rules and the procedures that are designed to keep people safe. But for passenger aircraft, you have to think of all the different layers of safety there are. There are pilots that have to meet certain standards, right. Flight attendants are trained. The aircraft themselves have to meet very stringent standards for safety and what they call airworthiness. You know, that's -- folks have said that's one of the reasons why the aircraft that was involved in the Delta crash in Toronto, right... that something that dramatic, you know, that people survived, and it's because there are just layers and layers of safety that are built into aircraft that carry large numbers of people.

JP: Mm-hmm. And yet these incidents still happen. I'm thinking one that happened just after Christmas in South Korea, where a Boeing 737, operated by Jeju Air, killed 179 people. Lori, how are you thinking about this string of crashes? Are crashes more common today?

LORI ARATANI: You know, it is interesting. And I understand that it's traumatic. The pictures are scary. You know, to lose so many people at one time. But you know what? People always say if you look at the statistics, you know, you're, I guess you're more in danger driving to the airport than you are actually getting on an airplane. You know, one statistic that I found in my research was, you know, in the first nine months of 2024, about just over 29,000 people here in the U.S. died in traffic crashes. That's more than a hundred a day. But I know it's different, right, because it's small numbers of people that are spread out. When you see an airplane crash, it's, it's very scary. But once again, there are systems built in to try and protect people. You know, here in the U.S. for our, you know, for this terrible crash that happened near Ronald Reagan Airport here in D.C., that was the first fatal commercial air crash since 2009. And as you mentioned in your opening, it was the worst air disaster in more than two decades. So it is safe to fly. It's safer than any other mode of transportation. But I understand why people are anxious.

JP: Putting aside comparisons to other modes of transportation, what if you just compared air travel right now to air travel in the past? Let me put this another way. Is it less safe to travel by air than it was five or ten years ago?

LORI ARATANI: That's interesting. I, you know, I... In the time I've been in the aviation beat, there are a lot of veteran aviation reporters. Some of them are no longer writing, but they talk about a period of time in the '70s, '60/'70s/'80s when they were covering crashes, you know, several times a year, fatal commercial air crashes several times a year. And in the '90s here in the States, you know, the FAA became very, very concerned about it, and they worked very hard to find ways to make air travel safer. And since then, you know, we've had so few crashes. And perhaps maybe they're so rare that when we do have one, it's jarring.

[music]

JP: I just want to spend some time now talking about the politics swirling around air safety in the U.S., especially since the inauguration of Trump. Hearing a lot about this big shakeup happening with parts of the U.S. government that are in charge of air safety, right. Yesterday, the confirmation hearing for Trump's pick for deputy secretary of transportation started. Steven Bradbury was general counsel at the Transportation Department in Trump's first term. He also worked with the Heritage Foundation and played a key role in shaping the transportation section of Project 2025. I wonder if you could tell me a little bit more about him and how you would characterize the hearing that's been taking place so far.

LORI ARATANI: His hearing was interesting, because he was also general counsel at the Department of Transportation during the Boeing MAX crashes.

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NEWS PRESENTER: Canada today joined most of the rest of the world on handling safety concerns with the Boeing 737 MAX. Two models of the airliner, the MAX 8 and Max 9, are now prohibited from using Canadian airspace. It's in response to the Ethiopian Airlines crash and a second crash by an Indonesian Lion Air MAX 8 less than six months ago.

LORI ARATANI: Several Democratic lawmakers were concerned that during their own investigations of what happened at the FAA and what steps were taken and what sort of signs were missed, the Senate was concerned -- it was actually a bipartisan concern that perhaps they had not been forthcoming in providing documents that the Senate needed for its investigations. There was also an investigation on the House side. So there are concerns about that. You know, there are definitely concerns about cutting jobs at the Federal Aviation Administration when you've had all these crashes. You know, they-- Steven Bradbury, you know, sought to assure lawmakers that safety is a priority, it's their top priority.

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STEVEN BRADBURY: We need the latest tools. We need the latest data and data analytics and computer capabilities. I think that is what the Secretary is bringing to bear in looking at the systems and ensuring that they are up to, up to speed, improved, etc. And we need the people. The people at FAA and in the department who can-- who are capable and knowledgeable about that.

LORI ARATANI: But insisted that, you know, even when you're trying to make a system safer, you can also perhaps make it less expensive. I don't-- maybe that's not the right terms. But he, you know, they're committed to safety, but they also are... you know, this is an administration that is not interested in putting more regulations out there, right, so this is what's going to be interested going forward, you know, as we learn more about what caused these crashes. We know that the system, the technology that runs the air traffic control system relies on a lot of very old systems. You know, they've been trying to update it so that it, you know, doesn't rely on old-fashioned radar navigation, but satellite navigation. But it's been slow going.

JP: These cuts at the FAA, they're part of the sweeping cuts led by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. I think it's hundreds of FAA workers that have been fired now. What do we know about who was let go and how that might impact aviation? Are people worried about that?

LORI ARATANI: I think people are definitely worried about that, right. We learned that these were all probationary employees, right, meaning that they were folks that [were] just hired on. You know, they maybe have a little less than a year of service, and so can... and be let go with perhaps less process than more veteran civil servants. The secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, and Steven [Bradbury] at his confirmation hearing, insisted that these were not safety critical positions. I think lawmakers are very skeptical about that. They've written a number of letters to the secretary asking for more information about what jobs these people did. You know, what criteria are you using to determine whether or not a position is safety critical or not? You know, is a technician that, you know, repairs equipment at a tower, you know, is he safety critical? Well, if you want your equipment to work, you know, perhaps he is. So we're also trying to learn more about the folks that were let go, you know, where the cuts were, and how that might affect the FAA's ability to keep travellers safe.

[music]

JP: I remember a couple years ago now, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, Jennifer Homendy, warned that the American aviation system was under stress after several close calls at airports. And can you tell me more about those concerns and whether they still persist?

LORI ARATANI: Oh, they definitely do. You know, we, in 2023, we had a series of what you call near misses at airports, you know, around the U.S. Incidents where planes got too close to each other, you know, on the ground, taxiing. We had an incident in Austin that was quite scary, where a cargo jet almost landed on top of a Southwest jet that was taking, that was taking off. The cargo jet was landing. And so there were a lot of very distressing events. And I think that's what led Chair Homendy to say that. And, you know, the issue is that, you know, we have had a shortage of qualified air traffic controller that goes back decades. And they have tried to beef up that workforce, but it's really, really difficult. You know, it's a tough, stressful job. There are very high standards. And so they are, they are trying to catch up. You know, I think the union that represents air traffic controllers estimated that we are about 3,000 qualified controllers short of where we need to be. That doesn't mean the system is unsafe, right? The system continues to function. And, you know, the FAA makes adjustments where they can. If folks have flown out of New York... A couple years ago, you know, they have had trouble making sure that they have enough controllers to staff those towers, and so they've asked airlines to voluntarily reduce the number of flights. So airlines have tried to compensate by operating larger aircraft, right. So they may have fewer flights, but they are operating larger aircraft. But those are sort of the, the things that the FAA is doing to make adjustments to ensure that, you know, the system can keep functioning safely. You know, airlines get frustrated. Passengers get frustrated because they... You know, the system... You know, demand for travel has not, you know, has not abated and people really want to fly. And so that is, I think, something that we're going to be... The Trump administration is very committed to finding ways to get more air traffic controllers in the pipeline, finding ways to, you know, update the technology that air traffic controllers use. You know, someone told me that in some towers, you know, the equipment is so old that they still use floppy disks. And you have to imagine -- you know, I'm sure some of your listeners don't even know what a floppy disk is. And in fact, some of the younger air traffic controllers that they're bringing in have never seen one. But it's been hard, I think, for the FAA. I think the FAA wants to update the equipment. But it's this hard thing where there's, there seems like there's never enough money, or they're just, because of the budget cycle, they can't get these systems in place. And in a lot of cases, some of their systems, they have to keep these older systems running while they're trying to bring these newer systems online. But sometimes the cost to maintain these old systems -- to get parts, to find people who know how to fix and maintain them -- is so expensive it doesn't leave enough money to pay for upgrades.

JP: Just, Elon Musk, specifically. I know that he has talked about revamping that air traffic control system. But I think it's worth noting that he's not been on good terms with the FAA in the past. In 2023, the agency proposed fining his rocket ship company, SpaceX, more than a half million dollars for alleged violations related to two rocket launches. And he threatened to sue for regulatory overreach and called on the former head to resign. How is his involvement landing with people in the industry?

LORI ARATANI: People are concerned about Elon Musk getting involved in the FAA because he's a user of the system and it seems like a major conflict of interest. You know, once again, I think that lawmakers and the public would welcome a way to update, you know, the air traffic control system. But I think there are also concerns about Elon Musk being involved in that, given that he's, you know, a customer and a user of the system.

[music]

JP: Lori, before we go today, I did want to talk to you about one other final issue that we hear a lot about, and that is Boeing. You've reported on its horrible year. Last spring, 50 people were injured when a 787 Dreamliner, on its way from Australia to New Zealand, suddenly dropped mid-air. And in January last year, a panel in the body of a 737 MAX plane was blown out during an Alaska Airlines flight. All of these, of course, led to a lot of concern. And where are we at with the investigations around Boeing?

LORI ARATANI: I think we're still -- you know, it's been about a year since that door plug blowout, and we're waiting to get the final report on, you know, what happened.

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REPORTER 3: Photo evidence shows bolts were missing from the door plug, which had been removed to fix rivets that were damaged in the production process. That's according to the independent U.S. National Transportation Safety Board report.

LORI ARATANI: You know, the FAA was criticized for perhaps not watching Boeing as closely. And Mike Whitaker, you know, when he became FAA administrator, there were multiple investigations and audits of Boeing's safety management systems. And so they were put on, I suppose, some kind of corporate probation where they are not allowed to increase production of the 737 MAX jet until the FAA is assured that they are doing it safely. There are benchmarks or standards that Boeing has to meet and that the FAA has to sign off on to say that, yes, you know, we believe that you are manufacturing these airplanes safely, that you're following your own standards and safety procedures, and that these jets are safe to fly and operate. You know, so the FAA has put a lot of pressure on Boeing. And it's not just the FAA. You know, it's customers, right? You know, airlines may still be ordering planes, but you want to be sure those planes are safe to operate. You know, I remember the CEO of Alaska Airlines, Ben Minicucci, how angry he was that this had happened, right. You know, you put your faith in the company, they're producing safe jets, and then something terrible like this happens. So I think Boeing's got a lot of pressure to turn itself around. I mean, they had the mid-air blowout. They had the safety issues. They had the issue with the Dreamliner that you mentioned. There were multiple investigations. They had a very damaging machinist strike. You know, they had to lay off. So the new CEO, Kelly Ortberg, who joined Boeing in August, has talked about focusing on their core mission, which is building safe airplanes. And so it's going to be up to him to turn around the company. You know, that Boeing is a major exporter in the U.S. It's a, it's a huge manufacturing giant here. And I think people are hoping that Kelly Ortberg can fix what's wrong with that company.

JP: Okay. I think that's a good place for us to leave this conversation. Lori, thank you so much for this. Appreciate it.

LORI ARATANI: Thank you so much.

[Music: Theme]

JP: All right, that is all for this week. Front Burner was produced this week by Joyita Sengupta, Allie Jaynes, Lauren Donnelly, Cecelia Armstrong, Matt Amha and Mackenzie Cameron. Our YouTube producer is Jon Lee, and Evan Aagaard is our video producer. Music is by Joseph Shabason. Our senior producer is Elaine Chau. Our executive producer is Nick McCabe-Lokos. I'm Jayme Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you next week.

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Is flying getting more dangerous? - Transcript

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