The crash landing of a Delta Airlines flight in Toronto this week has not tempered the support of Delta’s CEO for layoffs of Federal Aviation Administration staff.  Delta CEO Ed Bastian said Wednesday he does not believe that the Trump administration’s firing of hundreds of probationary employees will make the skies scarier. 

“The cuts do not affect us. I’ve been in close communication with the Secretary of Transportation. I understand that the cuts at this time are something that are raising questions, but the reality is there’s over 50,000 people that work at the FAA. And the cuts, I understand, were 300 people, and they were in non-critical safety functions,” Mr. Bastian told CBS Mornings.

Despite a number of plane crashes in the first two months of the year, flying is still the safest form of travel. The FAA guides more than 45,000 flights and 2.9 million airline passengers every day. 

However, while the number of aviation accidents from January 1-February 19, 2025 is fewer than the same period last year — 87 this year compared to 123 last year, according to the National Transportation Safety Board — there has been a spike in the number of commercial carrier accidents, leading to an increase in fatalities.

Before the deadly collision of an Army Blackhawk helicopter with an American Airlines Flight 5342 over the Potomac River at Washington last month, no one in America had died in a commercial plane crash since 2009. 

“We’re a very competitive industry across the U.S. airlines. There’s one thing we do not compete on, and that’s safety. We all work together, we learn from each other,” Mr. Bastian said.

The timing of the layoff announcement, concurrent with a series of small and large crashes, has caused many administration opponents to criticize the reduction in forces and led to general unease among the flying public. Google searches for “Is it safe to fly,” for example, have spiked in recent days, according to Axios. 

“Now is not the time to fire technicians who fix and operate more than 74,000 safety-critical pieces of equipment like radars, navigational aids, and communications technology,” said the ranking member of the Senate’s Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Senator Cantwell, a Democrat. “The FAA is already short 800 technicians and these firings inject unnecessary risk into the airspace — in the aftermath of four deadly crashes in the last month. The FAA’s safety workforce needs to be a priority for this administration.”

The debate over FAA staffing has led to a bitter and public feud on X between former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and current Secretary Sean Duffy. “The flying public needs answers. How many FAA personnel were just fired? What positions? And why?” Mr. Buttigieg posted on Tuesday.

Mr. Duffy reposted the tweet with his answer — fewer than 400 were let go and none was an air traffic controller or critical safety personnel. He then accused Mr. Buttigieg of using the Transportation Department “as a slush fund for the green new scam and environmental justice nonsense. Not to mention that over 90 percent of the workforce under his leadership were working from home – including him. The building was empty! 

During an appearance on Fox News Mr. Duffy added that while “we want to get to a place where we have zero crashes,” the airplanes that failed had been inspected during the last administration. 

“It is rich that they would come at this administration for the mistakes that they’ve made and blame us for the crashes. We’re going to fix what they refused to fix over the last four years,” he said. 

The latest public poll shows that 64 percent of American adults say plane travel is “very safe” or “somewhat safe,” down from last year, when 71 percent agreed with the statement. 

Adding to concerns was the midair collision Wednesday of two private places at Marana Regional Airport in Arizona. Authorities said two people were aboard each plane. Two of them are reportedly dead. The airport does not have air traffic control.