Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Sunday that the U.S. has “the safest airspace in the world.”
“We have the safest airspace in the world, and air travel is the safest form of travel that you can undertake in the county,” Duffy told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.” “Now we’ve seen some cracks, and it rattles people when they see these disasters.”
Duffy’s comments follow two notable airplane crashes in the U.S. in the last week: a Washington metro area-based crash involving an American Airlines flight and an Army Black Hawk helicopter and another Northeast Philadelphia-based crash involving an air ambulance plane.
“Making sure people get from point A to point B as intended, safely, is our mission, and that’s going to be ramped up under this administration, and it’s mission critical for the American people,” Duffy said.
The National Transportation Safety Board has recovered the flight data recorders for the aircraft involved in the D.C.-area crash, the agency said Thursday.
“NTSB investigators recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the Bombardier CRJ700 airplane involved in yesterday’s mid-air collision at DCA,” the NTSB said on the social platform X. “The recorders are at the NTSB labs for evaluation.”
President Trump has said the Washington area crash “should have been prevented.”
“The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport,” the president posted on Truth Social. “The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time.”
“It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn. Why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane,” he continued. “This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!!”
