FAA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump on Tuesday appeared to claim that his policies in his first year in the White House resulted in the commercial aviation industry posting its safest year ever in 2017 — though the U.S. had gone years without a U.S. commercial airline fatality before he took office…
Trump was referring to reports that 2017 marked the safest year in global commercial jet travel ever, with no deaths recorded. But, as Reuters reported, there were fatalities in accidents involving turboprop airplanes and cargo aircraft.
Still, the U.S. has gone years without a U.S. commercial airline fatality. There has not been an accidental death on a domestic commercial airline since February 2009, when a Colgan Air flight crashed into a house near Buffalo, N.Y., killing 49 people on board and one person on the ground…
Congress hasn’t directed any new aviation policy since mid-2016, when it last passed an FAA bill containing new provisions responding to the San Francisco, Buffalo and other crashes.
Still, principal deputy White House press secretary Raj Shah said in a statement that Trump ‘has raised the bar for our nation’s aviation safety and security.’…
The Trump administration has endorsed the idea of splitting air traffic control operations from the FAA, contending that putting a nongovernmental, nonprofit body in charge would boost safety. But legislation to overhaul the system has so far failed to reach the House floor or be considered in the Senate at all.”
-Brianna Gurciullo and Lauren Gardner, “Trump takes credit for airlines’ safety record,” Politico, Jan. 2, 2018 02:32pm