My father has a habit of reminding me of an ancient Chinese saying he’d heard some years ago: “May you always live in interesting times.” It’s meant to be a curse, with the point being that the most interesting events tend to bring suffering to others, in some sense or another. Over the course of the last five years, I have heard that saying repeated again and again, and probably for good reason — just one of the topics of our regular calls has increasingly been the matter of the planes in the United States seemingly dropping out of the sky at a record rate. 

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To briefly recap, for some unknown reason, it seems as though plane crashes are more common than previously, and this has sparked a small wave of fear over travelling by air.1 Naturally, neither of us are airline mechanics or know so much as the first thing about air travel. However, this complete inexperience in the field has not stopped us from coming to our own conclusion as to who or what might be behind this trend.

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The Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE), as established by Elon Musk, was our first suspect, and we weren't alone — 72% of Americans believe that plane crashes have become dramatically more common, while 57% attribute the recent crashes in part to the recent cuts in the sector, especially towards air traffic controllers.2 In fact, one of the highest-profile crashes, involving a passenger plane and attack helicopter colliding in mid-air, bearing no survivors, was caused in part by the fact that only one of the two air traffic controllers was working that day.3 

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Naturally, given DOGE’s high-profile pushes to cut the United States’ budget across the board, there seemed to be a clear and simple conclusion to draw: the recent swath of plane crashes could likely be tied to the myriad cuts to airline security, and that was that. Imagine my shock when I checked the statistics to support this argument, and found that airline crashes had decreased this year by over 40%.4 Where February of 2024 had 93 plane crashes, this last February had about 36.

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This raises two questions: the first being, why is the news saturated with plane crashes? In spite of there being nearly a two-thirds reduction in plane crashes, why has the popular sentiment been that planes seem to be falling out of the sky left, right, and center, even when they’re not? Another question, why has it reduced so severely in such a short period of time?

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To answer the first question, the reason is imminently obvious to me, at least as a “journalist” myself. The reason that plane crashes are appearing in news articles and all across social media is that people think of it as a narrative that “makes sense.” It’s a story that resonates with people because the line of thought that “large political upheaval has occurred in America, and at the same time planes are mysteriously crashing” is deeply compelling. It’s a story that makes you want to know more, or at least to sit in awe of something as catastrophic as a plane crash happening every other day, grim an event as it is. Further, given DOGE’s recent cuts to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), it’s a notion that makes sense, at least on the tin. The obvious question, then: why is this presumption wrong?

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The “why?” question is perhaps the hardest in all of journalism. That, at least, is my excuse for not knowing why this is happening. It is, by all accounts, a deeply bizarre story. While plane crashes have generally declined as safety standards have improved over the years, there are no cohesive explanations for the drop this year besides historic trends.5 To address the Shiba Inu in the room, it seems unlikely that DOGE's cuts would have had much of a positive impact in this case either, as most of the staff that have been cut have been in charge of regulatory decision-making, and not in the day-to-day activities of the FAA. The only feasible conclusion to draw is that there's simply less plane crashes, but it’s being reported on more because it draws people’s attention.

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Naturally, my talks with my dad are rarely, if ever, the pinnacle of political and sociological discussion. More often than not, we simply discuss what we’ve heard of the world, sharing in its bizarre and fascinating niches, no matter how biased our own experiences and perspectives may have rendered us. It is not unlike that supposed ancient Chinese saying, “may you always live in interesting times.” I’ve searched across the internet, and there is no real evidence that this quote was even remotely real. In all likelihood, it was a case of orientalism made manifest in the audacious claims of one explorer or another who wanted an interesting story to tell long ago. Fitting, I think — after all, if not for an interesting tale, what would be the point of sharing any story?

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1 NBC Chicago (2025, February 18th). Why are there so many plane crashes lately?
nbcchicago.com.
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/why-are-there-so-many-plane-crashes-lately-what-know-about-the-recent-incidents/3676528/

2 Data for Progress (2025, February 25th). Voters Think Plane Crashes Have Become More
Frequent and Blame Recent Accidents on Air Traffic Controller Shortages.
dataforprogress.org.
https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2025/2/27/voters-think-plane-crashes-have-become-more-frequent-and-blame-recent-accidents-on-air-traffic-controller-shortages

3 The Associated Press (2025, January 29th). Only one air traffic controller working during deadly
mid-air collision near Washington: report. CBC.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/crash-ronald-reagan-airport-1.7445596

4 Tran, N. (2025, February 25th). Have there been more plane accidents this year than in 2024?
Here's what the data shows. greenvilleonline.com
https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/local/2025/02/26/fear-of-flying-heres-the-data-on-2025-plane-accidents-vs-2024/80522850007/

5 Dobkin, R. (2025, January 30th). How Common Are Plane Crashes? What Statistics Show.
Newsweek.com.

https://www.newsweek.com/plane-crash-statistics-american-airlines-2023691