A search and rescue mission is now underway, with 60 passengers and 4 crew members mentioned to be onboard the American Airways airplane which crashed into the Potomac River.
Three troopers had been on board the helicopter. Twenty-seven our bodies from the airplane and one individual from the helicopter have to this point been recovered from the water, on the time of writing.
Flight 5342 was on its manner from Kansas when it suffered a speedy lack of altitude over the Potomac River. A full investigation is ready to start, with rescuers nonetheless pulling our bodies out from the water.
It has additional added to the discussions round flight security following a number of different high-profile accidents within the previous years.
Here’s what may be deduced in regards to the security of flying.
The wreckage after the Jeju Air Flight 2216
Chung Sung-Jun / Getty Photographs
Is flying getting extra harmful?
How did we get so far?
The American Airways Flight 5342 was the most recent of a number of high-profile incidents, with the 2 aforementioned cases in South Korea reigniting the dialogue round security.
“Travellers at this time are completely extra anxious,” Henry Harteveldt, a number one aviation analyst and president of Environment Analysis Group, advised the Occasions final yr.
Flying was statistically extra harmful within the Nineteen Seventies
AFP / Getty Photographs
Is there proof to point out that flying is turning into extra harmful?
Horrific photographs generated by these incidents can counsel there’s a rising drawback of aviation disasters. However analysis suggests the variety of accidents isn’t essentially rising yr on yr.
The very best variety of aviation deaths in a single yr on document, because the understandably excessive crash price of the Forties (Second World Struggle) is 1972, when 3,346 died, the information states. However this was not an anomaly, with the common variety of deaths per yr solely commonly falling beneath 2,000 within the Nineteen Nineties.
The worst airplane crash in historical past was a floor collision in Tenerife on March 27, 1977, with 583 killed.
These demise figures have steadily dropped within the years since and, by the 2010s, it turned unusual for the quantity to go above 1,000.
The variety of deaths in 2024 (416) was increased than 2023 (229) however consistent with earlier yr averages for 2019 (578), 2020 (463), 2021 (414), and 2022 (357).
The final time the determine topped 1,000 was in 2018, when the 2 aforementioned Airbus planes crashed in Ethiopia and Indonesia.
Emergency companies on the scene after a passenger airplane got here off the runway at Leeds Bradford Airport whereas touchdown in windy situations throughout Storm Babet
Danny Lawson / PA
Is flying turning into extra perilous on account of local weather change?
The research mentioned that turbulence brought on by sturdy winds, a quicker jet stream and storms are giving planes a rockier trip.
There are additionally extra floods reported on runways, in addition to rising floor temperatures, that are making it more durable for planes to take off.
That mentioned, it has not had a notable influence on the variety of accidents and fatalities.
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