Americans are afraid to fly after recent crashes — social media and DOGE aren't helping

• Americans are on edge after recent air travel disasters, and some are ditching flying altogether.
• Social media and recent FAA firings have heightened public anxiety about flying.
• Despite recent crashes, data shows that flying is still a safe mode of transportation.

Collective anxiety about flying often spikes after high-profile accidents, but the combination of social media and the recent firings at the Federal Aviation Administration may be exacerbating fears.

Videos of passengers inverted in their seats and evacuating from a smoking Delta Air Lines plane after it caught fire emerged across social media platforms after the crash, garnering millions of views on X alone.

The crash followed a deadly American Airlines midair collision that killed 67 people in January. Other deadly crashes this year involving small planes, including one in Philadelphia and another in western Alaska, have added to the collection of safety events.

Two more aircraft near-misses in Chicago and Washington, DC, on Tuesday, have further sparked concerns about planes crashing near airports.

Despite the public concerns and federal shake-ups, flying is still the safest mode of transportation, aviation experts told Business Insider.

Cautious passengers should focus on what they can control, like listening to crew commands — especially leaving bags behind during an evacuation — and wearing their seatbelts.

Some people say they're more worried than ever about flying

Thomas Lecaque, an associate professor of history at Grand View University with plans to travel for research grants, told BI he will make the journey between Des Moines, Iowa, and Boston via car instead of taking a plane after recent air travel catastrophes.

"Flying has always been a really, really safe mode of transportation," he said. "But the last month just made it really hard for me to continue telling myself that over and over again."

Plenty of fliers get nervous about air travel — a rough landing or turbulent flight here or there will do that. But Lecaque is among the travelers who read news about recent air crashes and FAA firings — something spearheaded by the White House DOGE office — and decided to ditch air travel, at least for a while. Hundreds of FAA employees have been fired in the weeks since the crash in DC in the office's push to cut spending. More staff reductions are expected in the coming weeks.

One Bluesky user posted on the same day that she was "officially so scared of flying" that she was going to drive to Chicago for her imminent trip.

Jesse Lei, a San Francisco resident, told Business Insider that recent cuts to the FAA are the biggest flight concern to him.

"I'm going to avoid the domestic airspace at least for the time being, because no one knows how the FAA firings will affect our safety," Lei said. "The DCA crash was especially scary because, if anything, our capital and national airport should have been the safest place."

Many who choose to fly say they're on edge more than before.

Joey Siu, a frequent flyer who has been working in Washington, DC, said that people on her flight out of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in February clapped when the plane took off and that the captain reassured passengers of the flight's safety, both of which seem uncommon to her.

"When a crash happened right at DCA, which hits so close to home, and when so many friends who do essential work in the federal government were fired, all these issues added up made my experience flying out of DCA a very, very horrifying one," said Siu.

What the data says about aviation safety

Globally, there were over 300 airline fatalities in 2024 — the highest number in recent history due to major crashes in Kazakhstan and South Korea, according to data compiled by the Aviation Safety Network, a nonprofit research organization.

According to aviation data provider OAG, the fatalities were still a fraction of the 2.5 billion seats flown by the world's top 20 airlines in 2024. In the US, data from the aviation data company Cirium shows US airlines carried about 600 million people in 2024. There were zero fatalities.

The January American Airlines crash means the US fatality rate will increase from 2024. However, Cirium data shows about 50 million people fly every month in the US — putting the current fatality rate at a fraction of a percent.

An August 2024 study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found the chance of dying in a commercial air crash was one in about 13 million boardings globally between 2018 and 2022. That is down from the one in about 8 million between 2008 and 2017 and the one in 350,000 between 1968 and 1977.

A combination of robust aircraft design, strict federal training standards, and risk-averse airline safety policies contribute to a sound aviation system.

Social media isn't helping the worry

Aviation and misinformation experts said people understandably see the recent slew of accidents as a seemingly chaotic time in aviation safety, but said social media has perpetuated that narrative.

For the first two months of the year, when many of the incidents occurred, aviation incident discussions on social media were up 243% on X in the US and 71% on Reddit compared to early 2024, according to an analysis by Storyful. In the same timespan, expressions of flying anxity rose 72% on X and 22% on Reddit, the analysis found.

US-based aviation safety expert Anthony Brickhouse told BI that social media has "changed everything." He added that livestreaming or quickly spreading images of crashes can lead to misinformation, particularly when posts aren't fact-checked.

Rich Davis, a senior security advisor at risk mitigation firm International SOS who worked at United Airlines for more than 40 years, told BI that people can get glued to their televisions after a crash.

However, Davis said the accidents are "extremely rare" and have no apparent links. International SOS consults with organizations to analyze and reduce risk while traveling.

He added that it's too early to tell if any of DOGE's actions have affected safety.

"When something does go wrong, people's minds often jump to wanting to find an explanation for that," Roberta Duffield, director of intelligence at the disinformation-fighting startup Blackbird.AI, told BI. "That can be really dangerous because there's always a massive gap between what happened and the actual proper investigations."