Trump Takes Credit for 2017 Being Commercial Aviation’s Safest Year
Experts claim the industry actually benefited from “good fortune.”
Despite claiming to be strict on commercial aviation, President Trump has focused on rolling back "burdensome" safety regulations.
White House
Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news - it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!
As the aviation industry celebrated this milestone, President Donald Trump took to Twitter, presumably during or after a cable news report on the data this morning, and claimed credit for this feat.
Trump’s claim to have been strict on commercial aviation is a head-scratcher, seeing as his goal has been to make “big changes” to aviation by relaxing “burdensome” regulations, as he promised in a meeting with airline executives early last year. He also signed an executive order that requires federal agencies to eliminate two existing regulations for every new one, and as such the FAA’s Regulatory Reform Task Force investigated potentially “outdated, unnecessary, or ineffective” regulations, while also accepting recommendations from other entities. This resulted in an industry panel targeting “dozens of safety rules” for elimination or revision.
The president has also been a staunch supporter of ATC privatization, of which opponents have argued the transition of the nation’s air traffic control system from the FAA to a nonprofit corporate entity will take several years and cost billions of dollars, upending progress made on modernization.
But what’s most bizarre about Trump’s claim is that the two reports regard worldwide commercial aviation. He has nothing to do with such success. Additionally, as many aviation experts have pointed out since this morning’s tweet, there hasn’t been a fatality resulting from a U.S.-scheduled airline crash since 2009. That’s something that experts and officials attribute to the continued efforts of many people, as mentioned in this Aviation Safety Network report.
“Since 1997 the average number of airliner accidents has shown a steady and persistent decline, for a great deal thanks to the continuing safety-driven efforts by international aviation organisations such as ICAO, IATA, Flight Safety Foundation and the aviation industry,” ASN president Harro Ranter said.
The ASN compiled an “extremely low total” of 10 fatal airliner accidents worldwide that resulted in 44 occupant deaths, in addition to 35 people on the ground. Five of the accidents involved passenger flights, the other five were cargo flights, and none were jets.
The 2017 totals are down from 16 accidents and 303 deaths in 2016. The five-year average is 17 crashes with 495 Deaths.
