Washington, DC, February 5, 2025 – Today, thirty national aviation associations issued the following joint statement.
Our country is mourning after the unthinkable loss of the passengers and crews of Flight 5342, PAT 25 and Med Jets Flight 056.
The entire aviation community is united in our grief and our commitment to taking action to ensure accidents like these never happen again.
We never take safety for granted, and we never will.
Aviation remains the safest mode of transportation in the world. Nearly 50,000 flights take off and land safely each day in the U.S., and our National Airspace System remains the gold standard of safety.
“We have the safest skies in the whole world,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has said. “Traveling by air is the safest mode of transportation.”
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chair Jennifer Homendy echoed that saying, “I assure you that the safest mode of transportation is air travel. It is incredibly safe.”
We are confident that the NTSB, working with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Department of Transportation (DOT), Department of Defense (DOD) and other parties, will identify root causes and issue recommendations for the aviation industry and the U.S. military to prevent future accidents.
The work of Chair Homendy, NTSB Board Member Todd Inman, other NTSB Members and the NTSB staff is critical for responding to these accidents and making our system even safer. As Member Inman recited days ago, “Through tragedy, we draw knowledge to improve the safety for us all.”
We strongly support this important work and urge policymakers to ensure that the NTSB and the FAA have the staffing and resources needed to ensure that the U.S. aviation system is safe and efficient and can continue to innovate.
We will find out what caused the terrible tragedies last week. We will learn from them. We will undoubtedly make changes. And by making an incredibly safe system even safer, we will honor the passengers, crew members and U.S. servicemembers who have been lost.