With students returning from Presidents’ Week break and spring break around the corner, Branham students are traveling worldwide. However, many worry about how recent plane crashes affect their travel. 

Airplane crashes have caught the attention of the media recently. Nationally, on Jan. 29, an American Airlines plane and an Army helicopter collided and crashed near Reagan National Airport in the Potomac River, leaving no survivors and labeled as the deadliest U.S. aviation disaster since 2001. 

President Trump addressed this problem, saying that the country was in mourning over the loss of 67 lives in the American Airlines plane and that this day was “an hour of anguish”. 

Other crashes have garnered international attention. The Jeju Air airplane crash at Muan National Airport claimed the lives of 179 people’s lives in December, leaving South Korea in mourning over one of the worst airplane crashes of the century.

California also experienced two airplane crashes within the first six days of the new year, with a small airplane in Temple City, Calif., crashing into a home and a Fullerton, Calif., crash resulting in two deaths and 15 injuries. 

Travel Club president Adam Orenstein thinks that the recent airplane crashes may create fear among his club members. 

“Some club members could worry about this,” Orenstein said. “I have one Travel Club member who’s only been on a plane once, and I could understand how hearing the stories of planes having malfunctions, planes crashing and people dying could scare them and prevent them from traveling on planes in the future.” 

According to Dr. Bob Baron, the CEO of the Aviation Consulting Group, one of the reasons why fear surrounds airplane crashes is because the news and media commonly sensationalize them through fear and shock value, and news channels report on speculation and factual inaccuracies. 

A study conducted by Fast Company, an American business magazine, affirms this, with 43% of readers reporting feeling scared to go onto an airplane after reading a story about an airplane crash. 

“It’s not good because these events are so rare,” Orenstein said. “But if you aren’t as comfortable and familiar with traveling via airplane, then these highly publicized negative events regarding planes could scare you.”

Sophomore Arjun Rasha, who plans on attending the school trip to France during spring break with other classmates, offers a perspective similar to Orenstein’s. 

“If [plane crashes] get big enough in the news, it could affect some people that are scared of airplanes, and that could impact how much people travel on airplanes,” Rasha said. 

Orenstein worries about how plane crashes will present obstacles for club members in the future. 

“It’s a giant obstacle in my club because, despite these increasing stories about planes having malfunctions, my members are still traveling just as much,” Orenstein said. “They still love to travel just as much as they always have, but I’m just concerned that in the future, it might affect my club members’ desire to travel because of their own feelings of safety.”

While airplane crashes are jointly seen as rare, malfunctions and delays are more common to encounter. 

Having traveled to four continents, Social Science teacher Sarah MacInnes enjoys traveling domestically and internationally. She chaperones school trips as a member of Education First (EF), a program that helps teachers travel with students together. She has helped over 20 students, ranging from groups of nine to 13, and has traveled internationally to South Korea, the Galapagos Islands, and other countries for educational purposes. 

Although MacInnes thinks that she isn’t directly affected by airplane crashes, she has encountered delays from malfunctions and technicalities while chaperoning before. 

“On my first trip, we [got] delayed for 24 hours in Miami because the airline delayed us from taking off for possibly a mechanical issue or the airplane staff just hadn’t fueled up the plane the night before,” MacInnes said. “They realized they had to fuel the plane when we were already at the airport. The plane delayed us by a couple of hours, which was not a fun experience because we should have been on the equator at that point.”

Despite being wary about recent plane crashes, her passion for traveling remains unaffected. 

“It’s really unfortunate, and it does remind you of the not 100% safety of travel when you see these stories,” MacInnes said. “But for me, although there’s an obvious risk, especially like a plane or a train, ultimately, the experiences you get outweigh the fear of something going potentially wrong.”

Illustration by Grace Ngo/Special to the Bear Witness