Counting Up, Counting Down
November 18, 2024
ON NOVEMBER 12, 2001, two months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, American Airlines flight 587 went down after takeoff from Kennedy Airport in New York. The Airbus A300-600 slammed into the Belle Harbor neighborhood of Queens, killing all 260 people on board, plus five others on the ground. This was, and remains, the second-deadliest airline accident ever to happen on U.S. soil, after the American flight 191 disaster, in Chicago, in 1979.
It also was 23 years ago. More than two full decades have passed since the last major air disaster involving a U.S. carrier — the longest such streak by far.
I was impressed when we made it to five years; amazed when we made it to ten; shocked when we hit 15, then absolutely astonished when we got to twenty.
And still the streak goes on. We’ve grown accustomed to it. Even I have. This year, the November 12th anniversary slipped right past me. I’m publishing this post almost a week later, after an emailer reminded me of the date.
Tens of millions of Americans were born, raised, and reached adulthood in this 23-years span. Tens of millions more were children at the time of the 587 crash. My point being: a huge portion of citizens have no real memory of commercial aviation prior to the early 2000s. Fewer and fewer people realize just how common large-scale accidents once were, year after year after year, both globally and in the United States. More than twenty air disasters occurred in 1985 alone. In 1974, the U.S. major carriers recorded five crashes, including two within three days of each other.
Training, technology, and regulation have all had big roles in what changed. So has luck, and it hardly needs saying that our streak at some point will end. Maybe in five months, maybe in five years, maybe tomorrow.
I have no idea what might cause the next big crash — who or what will be to blame. What I do know is that the ensuing media frenzy will be unlike anything we’ve ever seen. This is both because and in spite of how rare crashes have become. The smallest aviation mishap these days generates a remarkable amount of buzz, to the point where aviation is perceived to be a lot more unsafe than it actually is. I can’t imagine what the reaction would be — and will be — with a death toll in the dozens or hundreds.
Fifty years ago, in 1973, a Delta DC-9 crashed into the seawall at Boston’s Logan International Airport, killing 89 people. The incident barely made the front page of the New York Times, running below the fold, under an article about transit bonds.
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8 Responses to “Counting Up, Counting Down”
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AA 587 didn’t get as much coverage as it should have because it was only two months after 9/11, which was still dominating the news, especially in New York City. (The fires at Ground Zero were still burning; they weren’t fully extinguished until January, iirc.)
The feeling at the time was almost “Oh, greeeeeat, another disaster; we’ll just add another 260 to the death tally.”
My father, who grew up in the ’30s, once told me that a major lynching in the South back then might rate a paragraph or two on page 87. Familiarity breeds contempt.
But yes, the media these days (at least the Western media) is a sort of funhouse mirror for reality. It magnifies the frivolous & understates the grave. More & more.
Patrick, if you haven’t read “The Crash of Delta Flight 723” by Paul Houle, I highly recommend it. We have come a long way since then in aviation safety, both in the cockpit and at the airport.
Maybe the media is scared of Boeing and it’s Fisher-Price aircraft.
I remember AA 587 vividly and I remember wondering why there was very little news coverage of the incident considering how deadly it was.
You may have already talked about this in previous articles on the Nov 12 anniversary…but what is your threshold for a major crash? The 2006 Comair flight in KY (49 dead) and the 2009 Colgan flight in NY (50 dead) come to mind. They were regionals, not the mainline, but around 50 seems pretty major. I know it’s more subjective but just curious.
For what it’s worth, the brains behind who wrote the Colgan crash article on Wikipedia declares the Colgan flight “the last major commercial plane crash in the United States”.
Either way, impressive streak, let’s keep it going please.
I’m well aware of the Colgan and Comair crashes. I’ve written about them several times in prior articles and posts.
There’s a difference. These were regional airlines, for one. You can argue these accidents should be included, but my criteria is the major airline realm.
In the old days, “air disaster” meant a particular sort of thing. It’s somewhat hard to explain, but this is what I’m talking about.
When you hear about taking pilots out of commercial airplanes and making them fully autonomous, think how unlikely it is for that to ever have the same safety record as piloted aircraft.