The Trump-era freefall of American aviation is a flying nightmare

It was just another morning at Boston Logan International Airport until it wasn’t.

JetBlue Flight 822, a routine landing from Washington, D.C., did what no plane is supposed to do — it veered off the runway, not into catastrophe, but into the grass like a lost child on a school field trip.

A harmless mistake? Not in 2025. Not after what we’ve seen. Not when the sky is bleeding metal and the tarmac’s turned into a graveyard of incompetence.

At least 55 fatal aviation crashes have occurred in the United States so far in 2025. Three of those 55 were in New Jersey, leaving six dead in Jersey City, plus one in each of Franklin Township and Pittstown.

Since Donald Trump returned to the White House like a bad sequel nobody asked for, the number of plane crashes, near-misses, midair collisions, and flaming wreckage has gone from a rare tragedy to a recurring segment on the evening news — wedged between segments about collapsing infrastructure and fresh indictments.

The cockpit has become a front-row seat to the consequences of American decay. This is what deregulated, defunded, and deeply dumb government oversight looks like when it’s taken to cruising altitude.

“Incompetence is killing people,” said Lisa McCormick, a battle-scarred progressive Democrat from New Jersey who speaks with the calm urgency of someone watching the end of the world unfold in slow motion. “The number of plane crashes since Donald Trump returned to the White House should astound you.”

She’s right. But most Americans are too anesthetized by scandal fatigue and apocalyptic news to even look up.

You can’t throw a suitcase without hitting a report of another crash. Let’s crack open the black box of 2025, shall we? From Round Mountain, Nevada, to Woodville, Arkansas — 55 fatal aviation crashes in six months.

One hundred seventy-six dead. A regional jet in Washington, D.C. slammed into a military helicopter and vaporized 67 souls in an instant.

Just last week, an Air India Boeing 787-8 nosedived outside Ahmedabad after takeoff with 242 people on board. That’s not turbulence — that’s a death spiral.

Yes, we are talking about all aviation — not just Delta and United. But let’s not kid ourselves.

When even JetBlue, the much-touted “better budget airline,” can’t keep its planes on pavement, the writing’s smeared all over the terminal walls in grease, soot, and shattered luggage.

The raw data — cold and clinical — tells part of the story: 529 aviation accidents, incidents, or “occurrences” globally in 2025, and we’re not even halfway through the year.

The NTSB reports that the number of fatalities is climbing like a doomed plane with failing hydraulics. We’re almost at 2024’s total fatal crashes — and it’s only June.

Flying is statistically safer, the experts cry. “Trust the numbers!” they chant.

But those numbers don’t include near-misses so close you could feel the other jet’s exhaust, or cockpits where pilots rely on overworked, undertrained air traffic controllers hallucinating from triple shifts and zero sleep.

It’s not just the planes. It’s the people running the show. The Trump Administration’s idea of aviation safety looks like a spreadsheet drawn in crayon by a defense contractor’s unpaid intern. The FAA is understaffed. Regulators are asleep at the yoke.

Safety drills are replaced with cost-cutting memos. And every time a Boeing wing falls off midair or a landing gear explodes like a roadside IED, the response is an official shrug and another round of stock buybacks.

The public knows something is wrong. They feel it in their stomachs — not just from turbulence but from dread.

Airline ticket sales plummeted in April as would-be passengers said “no thanks” to becoming flaming debris. There’s something in the air — and it’s not just jet fuel. It’s fear.

Still, the headlines keep coming: A Learjet overshoots a runway in Florida. A Cessna crashes in a Maryland suburb. A cargo plane spirals into the Rockies. And now, JetBlue doing donuts on the grass at Boston Logan.

As of mid-June 2025, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reports a staggering 176 fatalities across 55 fatal aviation crashes in the United States alone — a sobering trajectory that puts this year well on track to meet or even exceed the 179 fatal crashes recorded throughout all of 2024. This means we are averaging nearly two fatal aviation accidents every week in the U.S., a pace that should alarm anyone who still believes the skies are as safe as they once were.

Beyond the fatal incidents, there have been 20 serious injuries and 41 minor injuries, bringing the total number of onboard injuries to 183. Additionally, 54 people on the ground have been injured as a result of aircraft accidents — a chilling reminder that the danger isn’t confined to those inside the cabin. These are not isolated flukes or rare disasters. They are increasingly part of a growing pattern of failure in a system under stress, and the numbers are mounting.

Globally, the NTSB’s CAROL Query database has documented 529 accidents, incidents, or occurrences from January 1 through June 10, stretching from the first crash of the year in Naples, Florida, to a more recent incident in Camas, Washington. While not all of these events involve commercial aircraft or major airlines, the trend is undeniable. Aviation is experiencing a turbulence that isn’t just atmospheric — it’s structural.

To be clear, many of these accidents involve smaller aircraft, charter planes, or private aviation. But the surge in near-misses, close calls, ground collisions, and mid-air emergencies — combined with aging equipment and chronic understaffing in air traffic control — has shaken public confidence. The impact is now economic as well as psychological. According to multiple industry sources, airline ticket sales in April dropped significantly, with consumers citing growing fears about flight safety and operational integrity.

In short, the numbers are not just data points. They are flashing red warning lights on the national dashboard — and we are hurtling toward the edge of something far worse if systemic changes aren’t made.

At Newark Liberty International Airport in early June 2025, chaos erupted when aging and outdated air traffic control equipment malfunctioned, causing a series of cascading delays, missed landings, and dangerously close calls in the skies above one of the nation’s busiest airports.

The heart of the problem was a 1990s-era radar system that temporarily glitched during peak arrival hours. The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed that a key component in the airport’s Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) system failed to properly track incoming flights, forcing controllers to revert to manual radio communication and visual estimates — a frightening throwback to pre-digital methods.

This lapse left dozens of aircraft in holding patterns, circling over New Jersey with dwindling fuel. Pilots reported garbled radio transmissions and conflicting instructions. One international flight was reportedly told to abort its final approach less than 500 feet from the runway due to an unexpected crossover by another plane.

The delays rippled outward: over 250 flights were delayed or rerouted, and a handful were diverted to JFK and Philadelphia. Passengers described hours stuck on tarmacs with no explanations, while air traffic controllers worked frantically with ancient, flickering radar screens and backup protocols better suited for 1975 than 2025.

The incident reignited outrage over the state of America’s aviation infrastructure. Despite years of warnings from aviation safety boards and unionized air traffic controllers, little progress has been made in modernizing equipment — a delay many blame squarely on political negligence, budgetary obstruction, and federal mismanagement under the Trump administration.

“The air traffic control system is hanging on by a thread, patched together with duct tape and denial,” said one anonymous controller. “We’re juggling jets with technology that should be in a museum.”

The FAA has launched a formal investigation, but critics warn that unless serious investment is made immediately, it’s not a matter of if another, more tragic incident occurs — but when.

This isn’t a moment. It’s a pattern. The sky is trying to tell us something, and it’s screaming. Flying in 2025 feels like spinning the barrel of a revolver and hoping the captain doesn’t blink.

So go ahead, America. Buckle your seatbelt. Return your seat to the upright position. And say a prayer — not to God, but to the last functioning mechanic left in the hangar. Because if the current president is supposed to be our pilot-in-chief, then we’re not flying. We’re falling. And no one’s cleared to land.