On today’s show: Aviation-safety reporter Darryl Campbell from The Verge explains why air travel remains safe, despite a recent string of crashes and near misses. NBC News’s Lawrence Hurley talks about how a “reverse discrimination” case made its way to the Supreme Court and why the justices might rule unanimously on it. Three men who were recently detained by the Trump administration at a high-security military prison in Guantánamo Bay told Washington Post reporter Silvia Foster-Frau that they were denied calls to loved ones, subjected to humiliating searches, and left in isolation for prolonged periods. Foster-Frau gives us the details. Plus, the Supreme Court halts a midnight deadline for the Trump administration to release certain foreign-aid funds, a child in Texas is the first confirmed death amid the state’s measles outbreak, and the U.S. wants to import more eggs to fight high prices and bird flu. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.
What are the recent incidents in aviation safety?
Hey there, it's Shamitha. I've got a quick request for you. If Apple News Today is an essential part of your morning routine, follow the show in Apple Podcasts. And if you have another 30 seconds, leave us a rating and review too. It helps other people find our show and it helps us know what you like about it. Thanks. Good morning. It's Thursday, February 27th. I'm Shamita Basu.
This is Apple News Today. On today's show, the Supreme Court weighs in on reverse discrimination, migrants detained by the Trump administration at Guantanamo share what they experienced, and one way to counteract the egg shortage. But first, there have been a bunch of worrying headlines about air travel lately.
Four commercial jets have crashed in the last 10 weeks, with close to 300 fatalities between them. There have been several private airplane crashes with fatalities in recent weeks, too.
Then this week, two planes nearly collided at Chicago Midway Airport, and a flight to South Carolina was forced to return to Atlanta when the cabin filled with smoke, forcing passengers to evacuate when the plane landed at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. Many people want to know, is it safe to fly right now? And do these recent crashes and near misses indicate it's less safe to fly than it was before?
So we called up aviation safety reporter Daryl Campbell with The Verge, and he acknowledged seeing so many incidents within a short amount of time is really unusual. Four commercial airline crashes in roughly two months is the largest concentration of crashes we've seen since 2019. But when you look at the bigger picture, Campbell told us the statistics tell a more comforting story.
Even including the recent crashes, your risk of getting in a fatal plane crash is about 0.2 per million flights. So it's pretty small. Put another way, you'd have to fly about twice a day for almost 2,500 years before you get into a fatal plane crash.
Even with these recent incidents, the risk of a plane crash is at a 60-year low, Campbell says. And thousands of flights take off and land every day without issue.
We're kind of fighting the emotional brain and the rational brain a little bit. But whenever we see one of those big plane crashes on the news, it obviously sticks with us.
Another thing to keep in mind, none of these recent crashes happened for the exact same reason. There were a mix of factors involved, which experts told Campbell indicate there is no single vulnerability in the air travel system that we should be worried about.
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