Craig Bowen 
President Donald Trump is taking credit for the safety of the U.S. aviation system even though it is being run by using a holdover from the preceding management and has prevented any industrial passenger fatalities for several years before he took office.
“Since taking workplace, I had been very strict on Commercial Aviation,” Trump stated in a tweet Tuesday morning. “Good news — it changed into simply suggested that there were zero deaths in 2017, the first-class and most secure yr on record.” If via “industrial aviation” he approaches scheduled passenger airline flights, the file truly stretches lower back to July 2013, while an Asiana Airlines plane struck a seawall as it changed into about to land in San Francisco, killing 3 humans. The ultimate loss of life on a U.S.-registered airline changed into in 2009 close to Buffalo, New York.
Commercial aviation typically refers to paying customers on planes of every kind. The National Transportation Safety Board said at least 13 deaths ultimate yr in seven crashes regarding commercial charter flights in the U.S. The last yr changed into unusual in a single regard: there have been no fatalities concerning scheduled passenger jet airliners everywhere globally, consistent with the Aviation Safety Network. But there had been 10 airliner injuries resulting in forty-four occupant fatalities and 35 deaths of people on the floor worldwide last year when charter and load planes have been covered. This makes 2017 the most secure 12 months ever, both by using the range of fatal accidents and phrases of deaths. In 2016, ASN recorded 16 injuries and 303 lives misplaced.
“I’m unaware that the president has had any impact on aviation oversight policy or practice,” said Bob Mann, president of aviation consultancy R.W. Mann & Co. ““Social media is not ‘oversight.'” “In truth, his stated preferences — less ‘red tape,’ fewer regulations — could advise a desire for less oversight, now not strictness.” The trend toward more secure flying has been building for years as U.S. Regulators, the airways, and protection investigators introduced onboard new safety technologies, higher tracking of capability dangers, and improved education. Indeed, the pinnacle of the Federal Aviation Administration at some stage in the first year of the Trump administration Michael Huerta changed into appointed with the aid of former President Barack Obama. Huerta’s 5-year term expires on Jan. 6.
Last yr’s aviation safety report is the culmination of a long time of labor by using enterprise and governments global and need to be applauded as an achievement tale, stated John Cox, leader executive officer of consultant Safety Operating Systems and a former industrial airline pilot. “It’s a tremendous thing. However, I don’t suppose any person individual can take credit for it,” Cox said. “Like the top of the federal authorities, I think you may take credit score for the excellent work the FAA has completed through the years. However, it’s the paintings the people inside the trenches have finished that have brought about this result.”
The FAA referred all questions to the White House.
“President Trump has raised the bar for our state’s aviation protection and protection,” Raj Shah, a White House spokesman, said. He noted anti-terrorism efforts and a plan to privatize air-site visitors manipulate that has languished in Congress. “The President is pleased there were no commercial airline deaths in 2017, and hopes this remains steady in 2018 and past,” Shah said.
Trump had harsh phrases for the FAA’s air-site visitors control device, closing yr all through the talk over whether it should be privatized and spun off to a non-profit. He started an era modernization program he said become no longer progressing speedy sufficient. “They failed to recognize what they were doing,” he said of previous efforts to modernize the system. “A general waste of money.”
