Trump Takes Credit For Airline Safety, Despite Slim Record

President Donald Trump on Tuesday sought to take credit for 2017 being the safest year on record for commercial aviation around the world, saying he had been very strict on the industry.

Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news - it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018","type":"rich","meta":{"author":"Donald J. Trump","author_url":"https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump","cache_age":86400,"description":"Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news - it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018\n\n","provider_name":"Twitter","title":"Donald J. 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Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news - it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!
Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018

But his actual record suggests this is an overstatement.

In fairness, the Trump administration did announce new security measures in June for flights entering the United States from abroad. Not all of those measures have been made public, but the new rules mean in part that U.S.-bound passengers are now asked a round of basic security questions, with enhanced screenings for a selected group of passengers on each flight.

On the other hand, 2017 was just as safe for U.S. aviation as 2016 and 2015, so theres no statistical change to suggest the new security measures had a major impact. (The figure in Trumps tweet refers to aviation safety worldwide, not just in the U.S.) In fact, there hasnt been a fatal commercial passenger airplane crash on an American airline since February 2009, when a Colgan Air Dash 8 propeller plane crashed on approach to Buffalo, New York. Forty-nine passengers on the plane were killed, along with one person on the ground. The National Transportation Safety Board attributed that crash to pilot error , and the following year, President Barack Obama signed a major piece of legislation that raised the bar for commercial flight training, among other safety-related improvements.

That doesnt mean there have been no aviation-related deaths in the U.S. since then. In 2013, an Asiana Airlines flight crashed in San Francisco, killing three teenagers . A few weeks later, a commercial freight crash in Birmingham, Alabama , killed the captain and first officer.

But the last major reform of aviation safety in the U.S. nevertheless dates to the Obama administration, while Trumps signature aviation policy thus far has been his proposal to privatize the nations air traffic control system, part of the Federal Aviation Administration. In a White House ceremony in June, Trump cited the agencys outdated infrastructure and argued such a change was long overdue.

We live in a modern age, yet our air traffic control system is stuck painfully in the past, he said.