The Current - Feel uneasy about flying? Here’s what safety experts say

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

A string of recent plane crashes, including the Delta jet that flipped at Toronto’s Pearson airport, have left many people uneasy about air travel. But an aviation expert tells Matt Galloway that flying is actually safer than ever.

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This is a CBC podcast. Hello, it's Matt here. Thanks for listening to The Current, wherever you're getting this podcast. Before we get to today's show, wonder if I might ask a favor of you if you could hit the follow button on whatever app you're using.

There is a lot of news that's out there these days. We're trying to help you make sense of it all and give you a bit of a break from some of that news too. So if you already follow the program, thank you. And if you have done that, maybe you could leave us a rating or review as well. The whole point of this is to let more listeners find our show and perhaps find some of that information that's so important in these really tricky times. So thanks for all of that. Appreciate it. And on to today's show. I mean, we hit the ground. It was very shaky. And then we were next thing you know, we were just

hanging upside down. It happened really quickly from start to finish. Pete Kukoff was on board Delta Airlines flight 4819 coming into Toronto on Monday. As it landed, the plane crashed and flipped onto its back on the runway. All 76 passengers and four crew members made it out alive. And Pete was one of the last people off that plane. Me and the woman next to me, we unbuckled pretty

quickly, like almost like the second we stopped, we kind of realized what happened, realized we weren't seriously injured, unbuckled, and kind of both suspended ourselves, lowered ourselves to the floor, which was the ceiling. I was one of the last people to actually get off the plane just where I was sitting. Thankfully, the flight crew did an amazing job, as well as everyone on board. You know, at the end of the day, everybody's going to be fine, which is pretty insane to say after a plane crashing and flipping over on fire. Pretty insane to say. Delta says 21 people were taken to the hospital as of this morning. 19 have been released.

It is not known yet what caused this crash. The Transportation Safety Board is investigating. And while crashes like this might make people feel uneasy, experts say that flying is actually safer than ever before because of advances in airplane engineering, safety training, and protocols. Scott Hamilton is an aviation consultant. He's in Chicago. Scott, good morning. Good morning.

What are you thinking as you hear that description from Pete Kukoff? Another passenger said they were hanging upside down like bats in the plane. Obviously a very frightening experience for everyone. I've never been in that situation, but it's not one I'd want to go through. You're the expert, not me,

but to me it seems astonishing that this happens and everybody survives and that most of these people who are hospitalized have now been released. What does that tell you? It really speaks to not only the safety that's been built into airplanes, but in this particular case, a lot of luck. If you watched this one video that came out yesterday

that was taken from a cockpit of a plane waiting to take off on the same runway, you saw that when the wings separated from the airplane, a fireball took place. Well, the plane continued to kind of roll out of the fireball, and that's really what saved the lives of all these people along with the safety that's been built into the airplane. Is that engineering or is that luck?

No, it's experience and lessons learned from decades of accidents. It's already been pointed out in many media that the seats in these airplanes now have to withstand what's called 16G or stresses 16 times the size of gravity. And all these seats, as far as we know, remained attached to their floor mountings, even inverted, as opposed to seats detaching from the floor mountings and becoming missiles with passengers strapped into them. That is a huge factor. There would be some force as the plane is flipped over

at speed, that if those seats weren't fastened in the way that you're talking about, they could become loose. Exactly, and those are lessons learned from previous accidents. What else has gone on when it comes to engineering that's made planes safer? Well, in this case, again, we're fortunate that the fuselage in the cabin didn't catch fire. But again, from lessons learned all over these decades, the materials used in cabins now are designed to inhibit a retard fire. Back in the early part of the jet age in the 1960s, there were toxic

materials used in the fuselages. There were very inflammable materials used in the fuselage. Here we had a fire that was around the airplane. The cabin did not catch fire. You didn't have any toxic fumes other than that from the spilled jet fuel and the fire retardant. That's part of what made this fuel, jet fuel and the fire retardant. That's part of what's made this plane, this accident 100% survivable. This is the fourth major air crash in North America in under a month, including of course the fatal crash in Washington DC last month. 67 people on board a passenger plane and a military helicopter died after the two collided in midair. You would see these incidents, and if you are a nervous flyer,

you would be even more nervous. If you are somebody who is confident, you still might be a little unnerved by what's going on. And you could imagine that people would ask whether it's safe to fly. What would you say to those people? You know, this is an unfortunate coincidence in timing.

With the Reagan accident in Washington, D.C. The last airline accident in mainland USA was in 2009, 2009 to January 2025. In Canada, the last airline accident before this one was in 1993 up I'm sorry in 2011 that was that first air charter flight up in resolute and that it killed 12 of the 15 people on board but there was survivability in that and before that the last major airline accident in Canada was 1993 so this is unfortunate in terms that you had this group of accidents, but the safety that we see here from the statistics is just astounding. And the statistics bear that out. I mean, the cliche is that you're more likely to, you know,

be injured or killed in a car crash on the way to the airport or falling down the stairs as you leave your house heading to the airport than you would be flying on a plane. Yeah, last year, or I'm sorry, in 2022 in Canada, there were 1900 auto deaths. And in 2022, there were 42,500 auto deaths in the United States. That's the size of West Vancouver today. One of the things that came out of this, and we heard that from from P. Kukov, is that the crew on board this jet did an incredible job of getting people out.

You heard, I mean, there's some videos from inside the plane itself of people being urged to the flight attendant saying, you know, leave that bag behind, get out the door and what have you. What sort of training do they go through to handle something like this? Well, the question, when they're first hired at an airline, they go through extensive training and they go through recurrent training every year as well. And it's not just ground-based accidents, they do water training in case the airplane comes down in water, that's very rare, but they do water training in case the airplane comes down in water.

That's very rare, but they do water training and this, they get this recurrent training every single year. What I'd heard is that they have something like 90 seconds to get people out. That that's the, that's the goal is to try to get people out of a plane within 90 seconds, is that right? Yes, 90 seconds is correct. And, uh, based on, on the, uh, briefings that I've seen so far out of the Canadian authorities, they haven't said how long it actually took to evacuate the airplane.

And it's also, at least here in the United States, a requirement that the fire apparatus get to an accident site within 90 seconds. And I haven't seen what that response time was yet for this one. Just before I let you go, as I mentioned, the Canadian Transportation Safety Board is investigating. They were out yesterday. Weather was very cold, blowy, and you saw people out

looking at the fuselage of this plane, trying to piece together what happened. What are the questions that you would want answered about what happened here? Well, it's a matter of routine that the investigators will take a look at the weather conditions and obviously weather probably was a contributing factor based on the videos we've seen.

They'll take a look at the pilot proficiency, the pilot rest period before the accident, the pilot's training history. They'll take a look at the the pilots training history. They'll take a look at the cabin crews training history. Again, that's routine. They'll take a look at the maintenance history of the aircraft.

They'll take a look at the field conditions and the runway conditions. And that's just a partial list. But having seen those videos and talking as you, have about the improvements in safety, you would have no concerns about getting on a plane today. I would do that tomorrow, today, sure. Scott, thank you very much.

You're welcome. Scott Hamilton is an aviation consultant with the Liam Company. He was in Chicago.