By leah jones
Many Americans are concerned with the news of another major airplane crash this year. A Delta Airlines flight with 80 passengers (0 killed, 21 injured) crashed while landing in Toronto on Feb. 17.
This news comes just weeks after the deadly collision on Jan. 29 in Washington DC that killed 67 people. It was the first fatal crash of a commercial US Airline since 2009 and most deadly since 2001.
According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), there have been 87 aviation accidents in 2025. There were 62 accidents in January and there have been at least 25 so far in February.
This data includes all aircraft types, with the majority involving private or smaller aircraft. In comparison, the NTSB reported 80 aviation accidents in January and 93 in February of 2024.
There have been 13 fatal plane crashes this year (10 in January and 3 in February). This is fewer than the 18 fatal plane crashes that were reported between Jan. and Feb. 19 of last year.
However, the 85+ fatalities reported in 2025 so far are more than double the 42 fatalities from this time last year.
On the other hand, five back to back plane crashes in 2025 have left at least one dead, with the majority of the fatalities resulting from the DC commercial American Airlines flight.
Seven people died from a medical jet crash in Philadelphia on Jan. 31, 10 passengers on a small plane that crashed in Alaska died on Feb. 6 and one person died after two private jets collided in Arizona on Feb. 10.
Most recently, two people died after two small planes collided on Feb. 19 in Marana, Arizona.
Despite the recent tragedies, air travel remains statistically safer than other forms of transportation like driving. This is especially so on US commercial airlines.
According to an MIT study released in 2024, “The risk of a fatality from commercial air travel was 1 per every 13.7 million passenger boardings globally in the 2018-2022 period.”