(NewsNation) — Despite all 80 people on board a Delta Air Lines flight from Minneapolis being expected to survive, Monday’s plane crash in Toronto marks yet another major incident in the aviation industry in recent weeks.
Dave Spero, president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union, told “Morning in America” the rapid firings of air traffic control staff could have introduced risks into the system and led to an increase in plane crashes.
“The aircraft control system in the United States is safe,” Spero said. “You never know why these sorts of things happen in these kinds of bunches, but our concern right now is … you can’t just suddenly make big changes and [fire] a whole bunch of people and introduce risk into the system.”
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The Trump administration has recently fired hundreds of Federal Aviation Administration employees, upending staff on a busy air travel weekend and just weeks after a fatal midair collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, D.C.
In a social media post late Monday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said fewer than 400 FAA employees were fired and that “zero air traffic controllers and critical safety personnel were let go.”
As for what caused Monday’s crash, Spero said he believes the National Transportation Safety Board is the authority on these matters for a reason.
“They go in there and they pull the whole thing apart and look at every aspect of the crash and make sure that they go by evidence and come up with the outcome,” he said. “You cannot tell what this is all about.”
