Bad Start to the Year for Air Travel
Although the increase in the number of passengers continues, reaching more than 5 billion by the end of the year, according to IATA experts, many difficulties have affected the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025. It started with a series of air disasters never recorded in the last 5 years. And the causes are very varied, even uncommon to date while waiting for the conclusions of the investigators. I note that there is no point in making assumptions before the final report and that it can take a long time to be published.
In fact, it started at the very end of 2024. On 25 December, the Azerbaijan Airlines flight operated by Embraer 190 from Baku to Grozny was in all likelihood hit by a missile and crashed in Kazakhstan after the pilots tried everything to save it. 38 dead.
Four days later, the Jeju Air company operating the Bangkok – Musan flight in South Korea, in a Boeing 737-800 hit by birds, crashed at the end of the runway without having lowered its landing gear, killing 171 people and by a stroke of luck, 2 survivor crew members.
On January 28, an Airbus A321 of the South Korean airline Air Busan caught fire on the runway of Busan with 176 passengers on board. Fortunately, no casualties were reported, as all the passengers were evacuated in time.
On January 29, an American Airlines CRJ 700 was hit in the final phase of landing by a UH-60 helicopter of the United States Air Force and crashed, along with the helicopter, in the Potomac River adjacent to the Washington DC Ronald Reagan airport. 64 dead in the plane and the crew of the helicopter.
This is a series that would have been good to do without. It is also interesting to note that each accident has a different cause, even if the final conclusions are not known. It ranges from an unfortunate injection of birds into the engines, as happened to the US Airways Airbus 320 in 2009, which was able to end up in the Hudson without causing any casualties thanks to the talent and enormous coldness of its crew, to a military attack that was probably unintentional, but which can happen when the guns start to talk. In the middle there is a problem related to air traffic control, even though it is in a country and an area that is very closely monitored, and a huge problem that fortunately occurred on the ground.
All manufacturers are affected: Embraer for the Azerbaijan Airlines flight, Boeing with the Jeju Air disaster, Airbus with the fire at Air Busan and Bombardier whose CRJ 700 crashed in Washington. At this stage of the investigations, we cannot incriminate anyone, but it proves that air transport is a risky activity. To achieve his major objective, which is absolute safety, he deploys prodigious energy, to the point of reconstituting cabins from debris, as was done for TWA flight 800, or like the research companion of the Air France Rio-Paris flight where enormous resources were used. In fact, the safety of air travel has improved considerably because the same accident has never been repeated. This is why the findings of the investigators’ offices are so important.
But all this has a cost and the idea that flying a plane safely is very commonplace should not be allowed to pass on the effect of promotions, which moreover allow new layers of customers to have access to this great means of transport. It is also surprising that for low political reasons, some governments are determined to collect taxes that will not improve this activity, including for its decarbonization, for which the colossal research costs will have to be paid.
Air transport is a fantastic activity, which leads people to know each other and therefore to respect each other better, and which is one of the essential factors in the creation of wealth on earth for, ultimately, the benefit of all. But it remains fragile. All the more reason to respect it.
