By: Luke Wagner (’27)

2025 is already the worst year in decades for plane crashes. Before the crash on January 25th, 2025, the last North American plane crash that resulted in fatalities was in 2022. Already, just a third of the way into 2025 – we have already experienced several plane crashes. Are they related? What are the underlying issues concerning each event?

January 29th, 2025, a plane crashes with a military blackhawk helicopter on its final approach to Ronald Reagan International Airport. This has been the deadliest crash since 2001 in North America. At 8:47 pm PST, an American Airlines CRJ700 crashed into a military helicopter on final approach to Ronald Reagan international airport in Washington, DC. 67 people died. The NTSB investigation is still ongoing to determine the exact cause of the crash and the changes that need to be made, but some glaring issues at the airport are apparent even without a deep dive. According to the Associated Press, there were 85 (!!!) near misses at the airport in the 3 years leading up to this crash. Even more sobering – collision alarms on airplanes that told the pilots to take “evasive action” had gone off at least once per month since 2011. It is obvious that there are serious problems that need to be addressed. Almost all other airports in the world never have near misses, so the fact that there had recently been 85, shows that this crash needs to be a wake-up call. It is terrible that a devastating accident like this one had to happen for changes to be made, but I hope they can be implemented before another crash similar to this one happens again. 

Just 2 days after the crash in DC, a medevac jet crashed in Philadelphia shortly after takeoff. After climbing, the airplane suddenly entered into a nosedive, turning into a fireball before crashing hard into the ground. Before impact, the plane was travelling at a decent rate of 11,000ft per second (for reference, the usual landing rate of an airplane is 6 ft per second). Although we will not know the official cause of this crash for a while, some ideas can be drawn based on the nature of this collision. At the time, the weather was overcast and cloudy. While climbing, the pilots could have become disorientated. According to Intelligencer, humans can easily be tricked in bad weather and think that an acceleration or turn is actually an ascent. This could have happened to the pilots, making them think that the plane was climbing, when in fact it was in a nosedive. Other factors could be navigational equipment failure (causing faulty information to be displayed to the pilots), or a simple equipment failure as a result of badly done maintenance or a factory mistake. 

On April 12th a sightseeing helicopter in New York city broke into pieces and crashed into the Hudson river. According to NBC, the rotor and tail DETACHED from the helicopter, causing  it to fall like a rock. How does something like that happen? It is not yet known for sure how the crash was caused, but it would be surprising if the answer was anything other than a mechanical failure. This crash needs to be closely studied, as we cannot have crashes caused by physical failure of the aircraft. There are a lot of things out of our control, such as human error, so we need to put effort into eliminating errors that we can control. The tour company has been suspended from flying while the accident is investigated. Hopefully, the errors made that led to this crash can be learned from. 

The next crash we will investigate is one in Toronto. The aircraft, as CRJ-900LR owned by Delta airlines, took off from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport enroute to Toronto Pearson International Airport. Upon landing at Toronto Pearson, the airplane’s right wing broke off and the body became inverted, with the gear facing skywards. Fire and rescue crews were able to arrive at the site within 52 seconds, and promptly started to put out the fire. Meanwhile, passengers quickly evacuated. Luckily, all 81 passengers survived.

How did this crash happen? First, let’s investigate the weather. From February 12-17th, Toronto received 50cm of snow, which is more than its annual average. When the crash occurred, the wind had gusts up to 35 knots, and this specific airplane is certified for a max of 37 knots of crosswind in clear conditions. These two weather conditions could have easily contributed to the crash. Due to such a high level of snow, the runways may not have been completely clear. Even if they were, the strong crosswind could have blown snow onto the runway, causing the airplane to have less traction. Based on a video posted to X, when landing there was very little to no flare. Flaring is when the pilot points the nose upwards right before landing, causing the rate of speed at which the gear touches the pavement to be lower. The high crosswind, coupled with little flare, could have caused the main landing gear to collapse, with the wind then tilting the plane over to the right, making a wing strike. This would then have caused the wing to break off, and the plane to invert. 

Crashes like these are extremely rare. The last commercial airplane crash in Canada was in 2013 (12 years ago!). Recently, investigators at the Transportation Safety Board of Canada released a preliminary report on why this crash happened. According to the report, right before touchdown the pilots were warned that they were descending too fast, and during touchdown the plane was tilted some degrees to the right. According to CNN, the right landing gear broke upon touchdown, causing the plane to slam on the ground, shearing off the wing and unleashing 6,000lbs of jet fuel. We will still have to wait for the final result of the investigation, but this crash looks to be caused by pilot error. 

Four crashes in the first few months of this year is a huge change. It is very concerning. All of the crashes may be unrelated, but we still need to find out what went wrong and identify how we can stop it from happening again. We will not know the full causes of each crash for another year, but when the investigations conclude, we must learn from the causes and make changes. If the problem is staff, we need to hire and train more people. If it is training, we need to invest in more schooling. If it is mechanical, we need to train better engineers. We have the resources to improve safety, but we need to use them. Air travel is incredibly useful, and has limitless possibilities on the earth – and even outside the planet. But before we see breakthroughs in the sector, we have to make sure that the safety and development side is ready. Hopefully, the air travel sector will be able to learn from mistakes that resulted in these crashes, and improve upon them to avoid future loss of life.