On Friday, January 31st, 2025, 7 people passed away from a medical jet crashing in a northeast Philadelphia neighborhood, killing all six people on board and a seventh person on the ground who was driving; the plane had also injured 24 others and destroyed more than 360 properties. Capt. Alan Alejandro Montoya Perales operated the jet. The medical was transporting a child and her mother. The child had just completed treatment for a life-threatening condition; there were four others on the plane when it crashed. The National Transportation Service has been searching for the seventh, who has not been identified yet. Although the person has not been identified, many families and friends have reported missing family members. Investigators have found many things, including a black box 8 feet below the crash site, which shows how serious this crash was. The black box will go to Washington for further review “With all the pain in the world and on behalf of my family, I want to thank you for each of your messages and calls, “ wrote a family member, Fabi Guzman. The president of Mexico has identified all the members on board as Mexican citizens. Before reaching Mexico, the jet was scheduled to stop at Springfield-Branson National Airport in Missouri.
Multiple plane and helicopter crashes have happened in the past year. For example, the Washington crash between a black hawk helicopter and a passenger plane left many people devastated and confused and tragically killed 67 people. The government said the crash was the aircraft’s and the pilot’s fault and could have been avoided. The amount of plane crashes that are happening per year has been rising for a long time and will continue to rise unless something is done to help prevent crashes. Many people are concerned about flying due to the recent and concerning plane crashes that are happening at the beginning of the year; a reason that planes have been colliding so much recently is due to the many technical failures, such as another small plane crash in southern California which was due to similar mechanical failures. There are a lot of improvements that could be made to planes, for example, the AI for the autopilot, the black box, which is a recording device made for the plane, another improvement that could be made is the watch towers performance which has led to many collisions between planes. An additional way to make flying safer and more dependable is to improve the training of pilots, crew, and airplane personnel, also adding better survival and emergency kits in the airplane. Although there are many things that we could improve about flight safety, there are many things that we cannot control. For example, weather, rain, hail, and heavy winds can heavily impact the safety of the flight. Another problem is human error; no matter how trained a pilot or crew member is, they will make a mistake; it is part of human nature, and there are not many things we can do to fix this problem.
