Within any circle of acquaintances, there’s probably one person who qualifies as having aviophobia — the fear of flying in an airplane or a helicopter. In fairness, it’s not too irrational; soaring tens of thousands of feet in the air, traveling at hundreds of miles an hour, all while locked in a kerosene-fueled chunk of metal with a bunch of strangers? Of course flying can sound scary.
Still, there’s a reason that it’s more common to complain about airline food than fears of certain death while airborne, and that’s because flying is an extremely safe mode of travel. Nevertheless, over 45,000 planes take off in the United States alone every day (per the Federal Aviation Administration), and with a daily pool of that size stretched across weeks and months alongside takeoffs in other countries, not every flight is going to start and finish without incident. Here’s how many plane crashes have occurred since the start of 2025.
How many plane crashes have happened in 2025 so far?
The National Transportation Safety Board notes that in the United States, 94 plane accidents have occurred from Jan. 1, 2025 until time of writing, February 18, with 63 occurring in January, and 31 occurring in February. Of those accidents, 14 of them resulted in fatalities; 10 in January, and four in February.
How many people have died from plane crashes in 2025?
Roughly 87 lives have been lost to commercial airline accidents in 2025 thus far. Per USA Today, sixty-seven of those deaths were the result of the Jan. 29 incident in Washington, D.C., when an American Airlines jet collided midair with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter. All 64 passengers and crew members of the jet, along with the three people in the helicopter, were killed. It was the first fatal U.S. airliner crash in 16 years.
Two days later, on Jan. 31, a medical jet crash-landed into a neighborhood in Philadelphia, killing all six people on board and claiming the life of a seventh citizen whose car was struck by the plane.
On Feb. 6, a small Alaskan flight crashed somewhere between the village of Unalakleet and the town of Nome, killing all 10 people on board.
On Feb. 10, a collision between two private jets occurred at the Scottsdale Airport in Arizona on Feb. 10, killing one person and injuring another four.
Most recently, two people were killed after two small planes collided in midair near the Marana Regional Airport, also in Arizona, on Feb. 19.
The February 2025 Toronto plane crash
Fears around flying earned their most recent spike this past Monday, Feb. 17, when a Delta Air Lines jet flying from Minnesota crashed and flipped over during its landing in Toronto, Canada. There were no fatalities, though 18 of the 80 people on board were injured. Nevertheless, with the occurrence of this high-profile incident in the wake of the aforementioned Washington, D.C. crash, it would make sense for aviophobia to be a bit stronger and more widespread than usual.
But let’s put all of this into perspective for a moment. If we take the average of 45,000 daily takeoffs in the U.S. and spread that across the month of January (i.e. multiply 45,000 takeoffs by 31 days), that would give us 1,395,000 American flights in January alone. If 63 of those flights ended in accidents — which is the number given by the NTSB — that would put the January accident rate for flying in the United States at roughly 0.00004%.
Those are pretty decent odds, to say the least, especially given the personal growth and experience that the act of traveling can give a person. Maybe don’t take your chances with the food, though.
Published: Feb 18, 2025 12:13 pm