What’s with all of the random plane crashes?
With four major plane crashes in North America since 2025, anxiety and concerns around flying safety have grown.
An airplane headed from Minneapolis to Toronto crash-landed upside down on the runway of an airport in the Canadian city.
Footage that has surfaced online shows the plane skidding into a crash on the snowy tarmac before it catches on fire and completely rolls over. The crash marks the fourth major plane crash to occur in North America since the year began.
The world came to a screeching halt when, on Jan. 29, a military helicopter collided with a passenger plane before both plunged on fire into the Potomac River, leaving no survivors and ultimately claiming 67 lives in total. Just days after, a jet rescue air ambulance carrying a minor patient crashed into a neighborhood in Philadelphia, claiming the lives on the plane. Then, just days before the Toronto crash, a plane carrying 10 onboard went missing before it was found crashed in Alaska with no survivors.
The latest plane-related catastrophe in Toronto has only increased the growing anxiety and concern about the safety of flying in today’s airspace. There has also been increasingly troubling news out of Washington about President Donald Trump’s plans for the Federal Aviation Administration during uncertain times in his administration for government employees. Last week, the Trump administration began firing nearly 400 probationary workers when the agency was already short by roughly 800 staff members.
“These are positions that are vital to supporting public safety,” a union spokeswoman told Reuters.
It is difficult to pinpoint whether planes are crashing more and, if so, why. It may not be fully safe to call it until the year gets further along. According to data collected by the National Transportation Safety Board, we’ve technically not had more plane-related accidents than we did by this point last year. With the exception of the American Eagle plane crash in the Potomac River, smaller planes and private jets are more prone to accidents. What happened in Toronto, an accident, either landing or taking off on the runway, is considered the most common occurrence.
However, a plane fully rolling over, much like a car, is apparently “very rare to see,” according to John Cox, CEO of aviation safety consulting firm Safety Operating Systems in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Cox told NBC 5 Chicago, “We’ve seen a couple of cases of takeoffs where airplanes have ended up inverted, but it’s pretty rare.”
It is true and worthy of concern that January’s crash in the Potomac marked the deadliest to occur in U.S. airspace since the 9/11 attacks. But it also remains true that the likelihood of dying in a plane crash is still too rare to even count.
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