A former pilot has weighed in on the alarming spike in plane crashes this year. Credit: Fabio Vieira/FotoRua/NurPhoto via Getty Images

So far, in 2025, there have been 120 aircraft accidents, according to data from the U.S. National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB), 22 of which resulted in fatalities.

The past two months have been marked by a string of devastating aviation accidents. On January 29, a catastrophic mid-air collision between an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter near Washington, D.C., claimed the lives of 67 people.

Just two days later, tragedy struck again when a medical plane crashed in Philadelphia, killing all six passengers on board along with a pedestrian on the ground.

Then, on February 6, a small chartered aircraft went down in Alaska, resulting in ten fatalities. Most recently, on February 17, a Delta flight flipped upon landing in Toronto. Thankfully, all 76 passengers and four crew members survived.

There have been 120 aircraft accidents in 2025 so far. Credit: Mert Alper Dervis /Anadolu via Getty Images

With such a troubling pattern emerging, many passengers are asking what’s behind the increase in aviation incidents.

According to Shawn Pruchnicki, who has spent years analyzing aviation accidents and whose research has been published by NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the industry insiders have been warning about this decline for years.

“As a former commercial pilot, crash investigator and expert in accident causation, I have seen the safety buffer that took decades to build steadily eroded in recent years,” he told the Daily Mail.

The former pilot pointed to a growing number of near-misses as a troubling sign. “The truth is, the experts have been raising the alarm for years,” he said. “We have watched in horror as planes come within a few hundred feet of each other – on the runway or in the air.

“If planes come within a couple of miles of each other, we start to worry. Any distance noted in feet counts as within a hair’s breadth of disaster!” he added.

Pruchnicki said one of the major factors in the rise of aviation incidents is the ongoing shortage of air traffic controllers. “They know that if they make a mistake, someone could die,” he said.

Pruchnicki also raised concerns about pilot experience, arguing that airlines are hiring and promoting pilots with “less experience than ever before”.

To address these issues, he believes the industry needs to invest in technology that can assist pilots and air traffic controllers – not replace them.

“Make no mistake, there is still a pretty good safety buffer in place in our skies, but it’s shrinking, and we need to act now if we want to stop it from shrinking further,” he warned.

Pruchnicki called for more “qualified candidates” to be recruited as air traffic controllers and urged aviation leaders to implement NTSB recommendations to strengthen safety protocols.

His concerns come as public confidence in air travel takes a hit. A recent AP-NORC poll found that the percentage of Americans who believe flying is “very or somewhat safe” has dropped from 71 percent last year to just 64 percent in 2025.