Worried about an upcoming flight? Aviation expert stresses flying is still ‘very safe’

Despite a series of recent plane crashes, an aviation expert with more than 30,000 flight hours says flying is still a safe mode of travel.

On Monday, a Delta Air Lines regional jet operated by Endeavor Air crashed while landing at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, flipped over and came to a stop upside down.

All 80 passengers and crew on board the CRJ-900 aircraft that had taken off the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport survived, though several were injured, authorities said.

The mishap in Canada was the latest high-profile aviation incident in recent weeks. It followed the deadly plane crashes in recent weeks in Washington D.C, Philadelphia and Alaska.

“Airplanes crash. Cars crash more frequently, and they are decidedly different,” said J.F. Joseph, a veteran aviator who served 29 years in the U.S. Marine Corps. and runs Joseph Aviation Consulting. “Aviation is still a very safe mode of transportation.”

Officials with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and Canada’s Transportation Safety Board will investigate the Toronto crash.

Joseph said it was way too early to speculate what caused the Delta flight to crash, but weather could have been a factor. Gusty winds were present as Flight 4819 came in for a landing about 2:15 p.m. Eastern time.

“Maneuvering crosswinds can be challenging,” Joseph said, noting conditions 500 feet above the runway can be dramatically different than those on the ground. “No two crosswinds are alike; they are dynamic. That presents additional challenges to the pilot.”

One of the aircraft’s wings snapped off upon impact and that could have caused the plane to rollover, Joseph said.

“It’s not very frequent a plane lands upside down,” he said, adding that losing a wing may have helped save lives.

Joseph said investigators will look at weather conditions, analyze digital flight data from recorders onboard and the history of the aircraft, including its maintenance records and condition of the jet.

It’s understandable that flyers these days might feel a bit jittery of boarding their next flight, but Joseph said it’s still safe to fly.

“You can have mishaps in a short period of time; there is a difference between frequency and trends,” he said. “Trends are more about causation, to see if there are similarities in training or maintenance” contributing to the crashes.

To that end, Joseph said it’s important to step back and “take a deep breath,” let the investigation run its course, then determine what likely happened and note “lessons learned” to prevent future occurrences.