“… but there hasn’t been a crash in years … “
Exactly. The last mass-casualty commercial airliner accident in the United States was Colgan Air Flight 3407 in 2009 where 49 passengers and crew lost their lives. A tragedy that we later learned could have been avoided.
It’s been more than 15 years. A lot has happened since then. Aviation has gotten – and remained – so safe that mass casualty accidents like Colgan haven’t happened. But if there is one lesson about aviation we have all learned, it is that safety isn’t flawless. Near misses. Runway incursions. Pieces of the aircraft falling off. One airline suffered a fatality after an uncontained engine failure, and a foreign carrier had a fatality after a rescue vehicle ran over a passenger. Accidents continue to happen, and we continue to narrowly avoid the catastrophic weekly.
That’s why we have AERO.
Consisting of emergency managers who have lived these catastrophic events – and dozens of accidents that narrowly avoided the worst-case case scenario – AERO strives to pass along their experiences to today’s crisis managers, the first responders in the aviation industry. Airlines, insurers, former regulators and investigators, consultants and lawyers all have seats in AERO.
Our general membership meeting February 4, 2025 in D.C. will feature some of these experts on a panel where they will discuss our experiences and answer your questions. It’s a unique opportunity to pick the brains of folks who, literally, have “been there, done that.”
We hope you can join us for our meeting, and the insightful 20th Anniversary Aviation Symposium. You can register for the symposium at the link at the top of the page and we will have additional detail on our panel in the new year.
So, until then, stay safe and be prepared.
AERO board member John McDonald is the founder of Caeli Communications, a crisis communications consultancy started after he retired as VP of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs for American Airlines Group.
