Flight Risks

AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTHere’s an extraordinary statistic. Between February 2009, when a commuter plane crashed on an icy night outside of Buffalo, N.Y., killing 50 people, and January 2025, when an Army helicopter and a commuter jet collided over the Potomac River, killing 67, the major U.S. airlines handled around 10 billion journeys. Not one person died in a crash during that time.It was the longest disaster-free period in the history of American air travel. Nearly 16 years! James Fallows, who looks at what has happened to air safety in the months since the Potomac crash, likens the achievement to the government-led effort to create a polio vaccine in the 1950s. There was, he writes, “a profound commitment from the people in charge to learn from tragedies — what aviation experts call ‘lessons written in blood.’”That commitment is weakening now, Fallows reports: “The Trump administration has displayed an extraordinary unwillingness to learn new lessons, and in some cases it seems to be unlearning the old ones.”Fallows is an accomplished pilot and author of three books on aviation. Here are some of the things he’s learned about aviation safety since the Potomac collision.ImageAfter the Potomac collision last year.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York TimesUnlearned lessons. The day after the crash, President Trump announced his view of why it happened: D.E.I.-focused hiring practices at the Federal Aviation Administration during the Obama and Biden administrations. The actual cause, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent agency, was overcrowding of the airspace. The board made 33 recommendations for changes to equipment and procedures that would lessen the likelihood of future collisions. But the F.A.A. has not implemented a third of them, which the N.T.S.B. calls “unacceptable.”The government has fired many specialists, including all of the members of a key airline security advisory committee and some 400 probationary employees who had not yet been awarded civil-service protection. “We’ll look back on choices like these as the first step in some future accident chain,” a 30-year NASA veteran told Fallows.The F.A.A. cut its staffing targets. In August, after a shortage of air traffic controllers caused delays across the country, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he had “supercharged” recruiting efforts. The F.A.A. had previously cut its staffing target by more than 2,000 on the theory that new systems, including A.I., would bridge the gap.The government performs a lot of unannounced maneuvers in the sky. The Pentagon, in particular, has delivered chaos and confusion to commercial aviation authorities with surprise military operations over the Caribbean. In one case, a JetBlue plane had to take evasive action to avoid a collision. And in February, Customs and Border Protection used a laser-powered anti-drone weapon system it borrowed from the Pentagon to shoot down a party balloon it had incorrectly identified as a Mexican cartel drone, leading to the shutdown of El Paso International Airport for roughly eight hours.Read the full story. It’s free even if you’re not (yet) a subscriber.A crisis at NvidiaJensen Huang’s future as the chief executive of Nvidia is in question after new reports emerged that he had an affair with an executive who reports to him — Nvidia’s vice president of health care — as well as a woman U.S. intelligence has identified as a Chinese spy.Nvidia’s board met to discuss Huang but has announced no decision on his future. The company’s shares plummeted.Some of Silicon Valley is rallying around Huang, arguing that he is essential to the A.I. race. Nvidia controls an estimated 90 percent of the market for the computer chips used in the big A.I. projects that are driving the U.S. economy. Read the latest news here.For more: Huang’s wife stands out among tech titan spouses for how private she has been. Now she’s in the spotlight.Mississippi’s Democratic senatorImageAt Tougaloo College in Jackson, Miss.Credit...Rory Doyle for The New York TimesScott Colom, a Democrat, won the Mississippi Senate race in a historic upset. He’ll be the first Black senator to represent the state since Reconstruction. He won with a slim margin after more than a week of ballot tallying.“God didn’t want us to get it the easy way,” Colom said in his victory speech. “He wanted us to get it the Mississippi way.”For more: Read about Mississippi’s two previous Black senators.TODAY’S NUMBER98— That is at least how many lawsuits challenging weapon restrictions have used a specific 2008 precedent. That decision, written for the majority by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, said that such restrictions are allowed only if a firearm is both “dangerous and unusual.” Scalia was quoting an 18th-century English jurist whose writing became the basis for much of American law. Except Scalia misquoted the guy.SPORTSN.F.L.: Rex Ryan, the former New York Jets coach and ESPN analyst, was arrested in Nashville after he hit pedestrians with his car and left the scene.Olympics: The skiing star Lindsey Vonn said her ACL repair, the ninth surgery she has undergone since a crash, “went well.” More details are here.RECIPE OF THE DAYImageCredit...Kerri Brewer for The New York TimesThis lentil tomato soup has just a few ingredients and comes together in about a half-hour. It tastes as if it has about 35 and took the better part of the day. Why? The nutty, complex taste of the brown butter at its base gets an approximately 213 percent amplification by the addition of heavy cream, which reduces into a kind of toasted cheese that brings together the legumes and the tomatoes beautifully. Serve with big hunks of crusty bread to mop the bowl with when you’re done eating.GOING ZENImageRobert GreeneCredit...Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York TimesPeople have bought nearly 10 million copies of Robert Greene’s blockbuster self-help book “The 48 Laws of Power,” a merciless primer on self-advancement through manipulation and trickery, in the United States since its publication in 1998. Fans include Drake, Joe Rogan, Will Smith and 50 Cent. Greene was hailed as a modern-day Machiavelli.Then he had a stroke and experienced transcendence. His new manual is “The Law of the Sublime,” a 496-page road map for inner enlightenment and states of awe. “How do you fix yourself after you’ve acquired power? This book is that,” 50 Cent told The Times.More on cultureShane MacGowan of the Pogues is the subject of a huge new tribute album, out Friday. Made in close partnership with his widow and his sister, “20th Century Paddy: The Songs of Shane MacGowan” brings together artists including Bruce Springsteen, U2, Hozier, Tom Waits, the Libertines, Jessie Buckley and Glen Hansard to celebrate the work of one of Ireland’s greatest lyricists, who died in 2023. Read about its birth.Would you spend $150 on a Thanksgiving apple pie? You certainly can, if the $5.99 pumpkin pie at Costco doesn’t appeal. Read our report from the front lines of the new pie economy.THE MORNING RECOMMENDSImageCredit...Audrey Helen WeberManage the seasonal depression that comes for so many of us when we’re commuting in the dark. Our Well desk has advice. (TL;DR? Go outside in the morning!)Consider using a teeny-tiny toolbox from Harbor Freight as a place to store your everyday carries at night — your watch, say, and wallet, cash, earphones, sunglasses, pocketknife, flashlight and compass. (Or is that just me?)Write with a pencil, so you can erase your mistakes. The crossword neophytes at Wirecutter have selected the very best ones. (I’m a Ticonderoga man, myself.)GAMESSam Sifton, the host of The Morning, was previously an assistant managing editor responsible for culture and lifestyle coverage and is the founding editor of New York Times Cooking.Related ContentAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT