Most Americans take for granted the safety of air travel as an average of 2.9 million people shuttle from destination to destination aboard 45,000 flights each day. Accidents are very rare thanks to the administration of federal aviation regulations and the more than 14,000 air traffic controllers who staff airport towers and control centers nationwide.
Confidence in that system will quickly erode if the Trump administration does not take seriously its responsibility to protect it. Wednesday’s deadly crash in Washington, D.C., is an early test of that commitment, and the White House response should have the nation demanding better.
In normal times, the mid-air collision of an American Airlines flight and a U.S. Army helicopter near Washington’s Reagan National Airport would be a moment for grief and national reflection. There would be mourning for the loss of 67 people, including about 20 young figure skaters, their parents and coaches returning from the national championship competition in Kansas.
A thorough investigation, conducted with urgency, would follow, with experts combing through mountains of evidence to determine precisely what went wrong. The conclusions would be amplified by a firm resolve to improve air safety throughout the country.
Days after the nation’s deadliest air disaster since 2009, however, the Trump administration seems wholly uninterested in doing any of that. As first responders continued to pull bodies from the water, President Donald Trump used a Thursday morning press conference to attack diversity initiatives at the Federal Aviation Administration and blame former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama for weakening the nation’s aviation infrastructure without mentioning how his time in office had done just that.
He did not mention the victims, or express sympathy to the families and friends of those lost. Instead, he offered his own conclusions about the crash — absent a shred of evidence or before an investigation had begun — in order to deflect any responsibility from his administration.
Trump has never been the “comforter-in-chief,” but his disregard for the families and friends of the victims was still stunning in its callousness. Asked if he would visit the crash site to thank first responders recovering the dead, the president said that the crash was in the water and asked if the assembled press expected him to go swimming.
Aviation officials have warned about a looming crisis for air safety, pointing to the nation’s crowded airspace, busy runways and vacancies in the ranks of air traffic controllers as the ingredients for calamity. That was front and center during a debate last year about adding flights to Washington National, given the congested airspace there, but Congress has dismissed those worries while approving 50 more takeoffs and landings at the airport since 2000.
But in his first two weeks since inauguration, Trump fired the head of the Transportation Safety Administration and all the members of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee. Elon Musk, a private citizen with no formal role in government, successfully pushed FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker to resign on Jan. 20, leaving that agency without a director. The administration also imposed a hiring freeze on vacant positions and encouraged the resignation of federal employees, including among already short-staffed air traffic controllers.
While that does not put blame for the crash entirely on Trump’s shoulders, it does suggest that addressing those problems won’t be a top administration priority, if it is a priority at all. Trump instead exploited the opportunity to continue his unrelenting assault on diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) initiatives — even though he expanded a program to diversify the air-traffic controller ranks during his first administration.
The president’s penchant for causing chaos may have inspired voters on the campaign trail, but it’s a dangerous practice in governance. Americans expect their planes and roads and food and water to be safe, but each requires a determined commitment by those running the executive branch.
What happened on Wednesday night was a heartbreaking tragedy that calls for competent, compassionate and measured leadership. Nothing in the days since suggests the White House will provide it.